The Freedom of the Will, Part 2 (1 of 2)

The Freedom of the Will · Part 2 (1 of 2)

p. 134A DISCOURSE OF THE Freedome of the Will. The SECOND PART.

Wherein the Arguments for it are considered and answered.

HAving finished those Arguments ranked under their several Heads, in opposition to that Liberty of the Will, which is placed in the determining of its power, received from the first cause, unto a Contrariety or Contradiction in its actings, with an independency upon the first cause, the order and connexion of Causes, and the Understanding,

We pass now to a consideration of the Reasons, upon which that Opinion of this Freedome is established. These Reasons are taken,

1. From the Will it self.

2. From the nature of Sin, and the Divine Justice.

3. The Language of the Scripture.

4. From the end of Laws.

5. From the order and nature of things.

1. Reason. The Prerogative and Excellency of the Will consisteth in this Liberty.

1. How otherwise doth man excel bruit Creatures and natural Agents?

2. How otherwise is man free, and not necessitated in all his Actions? To that I shall give two several Answers.

1. Answ. This Freedome of the Will, of which we speak, and which is opposed to necessity, is no perfection.

p. 135I shall make way for the explanation and confirmation of this by distinguishing necessity into a

1. Necessity of Coaction.

2. Necessity of Nature.

1. A necessity of Coaction is from an outward power, restraining the subject from acting according to the principles of its nature, or constraining it to Actions besides, or against its nature. This necessity is indeed contrary to true freedom. A freedom from this necessity, or from a capacity of being thus necessitated is the perfection or excellency of man.

2. The necessity of nature is that, which is founded in, and flows from the Essence it self, the essential and internal principles of each nature. This necessity is so far from being inconsistent with Liberty, that it is the establishment and firmness of the subject in its proper freedom. The demonstration of this is clear in the Divine Nature; for as God alone is Ens perfectè liberum, A Being most perfectly free; so is he according to the Doctrine of all the Schools, alone, Ens absolutè necessarium, A Being absolutely necessary. And as is his Being, such is his Understanding, such is his Will, such are all his Acts, necessary and necessarily good, as they are most perfectly free. For his Being in the absoluteness, and simplicity of it, is his Understanding, his Will, one pure, simple, and eternal Act, goodness it self.

The learned Prideaux, in the Chair at Oxford, rightly teacheth us this, That God in those his first Acts of Election, although he be not moved by any Causa foreign; that is, any cause from without, giving occasion for these distinguishing Acts; is yet determined to them by a Causa foreign. A reason from within, from the glorious secret of his own Essence which hath so much the more of a Divine force in it, by how much the more it is incomprehensible to us.

2. Answ. The freedom of the Will, if it be rightly understood and stated, will, as I humbly conceive, appear far more beautiful, glorious and divine in these three Circumstances.

1. The Liberty of the Will is truly Divine in the amplitude of its Object, which is goodness in its utmost latitude, and fulness, in its utmost heighth and glory. The Will of Man is not determined or confined to a particular good, or an inferior good, to that of meer nature or of sense. It hath its freedom to range through the flowry and spacious Field of all good, in its richest Variety; yea to soar up to that blissful Paradise of the supream good it self in the third and highest Heavens, there to spread it self, and roul it self in the midst of all the Treasures, of all the distinct Beauties and Joys of every good, as all meet here with the highest lustre, with the purest and most perfect sweetness in the bosome of this first and chief good.

2. The Will of man is in this, divinely free, that it always acts after an irresistable manner, according to its own proper Nature, so that nothing can move it, but per modum interni principii, and secundum morem objecti propositi, after the manner of the inward Principles, of its own Essence, and the proposal of its Object. As the Divine p. 136Will is goodness it self, in its greatest amplitude and perfection: so is the Will of Man, which is the Birth and Image of the Divine Will, goodness in the seed, which as the Divine Goodness is presented in various appearances, so it can by no means, by no power, beneath a power of creating, and annihilating be restrained from springing up and flourishing, and flying into the bosom of that appearance, to become perfectly one with it, as a most chast and affectionate Bride, with her most beautiful and beloved Bridegroom. If this Bride, the Will of Man, embrace a Stranger, or an Enemy in the place of her own Beloved, it is by being first deceived, by his coming and presenting himself to her in the appearance of her Bridegroom. The woman being deceived, was first in the Transgression. Sin deceived me, and so slew me, saith St. Paul. Thus is the Will of Man not like to that figure in the Poet, Monstrum informe, cui lumen ademptum. A rude, unformed power, acted without Light, without Order, without Principle or End, by a rash uncertainty, in an unformed darkness. This were no liberty, but the greatest servitude of a Spirit, bound in Chains of Darkness, and hurried by the Power of Darkness it knows not how, nor why, nor whither. No, the Will of Man is in its own uncorrupt state a beautiful Virgin, with fair eyes like Doves, washt in Milk by a Divine Love, carried in a Divine Light to the Arms of her Beloved, the Divine Beauty and Goodness.

In its faln Estate, while in the midst of false Lights, and false appearances, raised by that great Inchanter, the Prince of Darkness, it is held in the Serpentine embrances of false Lovers, as in nets and bands; yet is it its own Beloved and Bridegroom, which she loves and seeks in all these.

It is also its essential inclination and love to the Divinity of the true loveliness, the true good, which is abused, and by which advantage is taken for it self, to be abused by all these Impostures and false loves. Good is that which all things desire, saith the Philosopher. That God whom ye ignorantly worship, that God preach I (saith St. Paul) to the Athenians. The highest piece of Worship is the inclination and motion of the Will, our Love.

Object. But you will say, What preheminence hath man by his freedome? the inclination and sensitive Appetite of bruit Creatures may be allured, but cannot be forced no more than the Will of Man?

Answ. I give two Answers to this,

1. The Civil Law saith, That he is free, who is sui juris, in his own power; the freedom of each thing is a power of acting, according to the Principles of Nature, and the Law of its own Essence. As then the excellency and preheminence of each Essence, or Nature is, such is the dignity of the freedome or liberty of working, according to that nature. As Reason, the essential form of man, which is the Universal Harmony of all good, transcends the life of sense confined to the inferior and shadowy Image of good in its immortal substance: So doth the rational Appetite in its freedom, which is as ample, as reason it self, and diffuseth it self at liberty upon the blissful Bosom p. 137of the Universal Good, excel the sensitive Appetite, tyed up to the narrow and fading Objects of sense.

2. The Will of Man is a rational inclination to the rational, intellectual, eternal, and supream good. This is the Coelestial Love, which is born up upon its two wings of Rational; that is, Coelestial delight and desire. While it continues in its naked state of Innocency and true Freedom, it hath a liberty and power in it self, in despight of all impressions of outward force, to fly above them all, upon these golden wings, into the Bosom of the Divine Will, which is the universal and supream good; there cleaving to, and becoming one with that blessed and triumphant Will, it hath no more any sense of opposition or force; all things now round about it make a pleasant Musick to it in the Harmony of the Divine Will, and shine upon it with a most ravishing and heavenly lustre, as they lie together in the Divinely-beautiful Form of the first and universal good.

This is that true Liberty of the Will of Man, in which he transcends all other Creatures here below, by which he triumphs over all Chances and Changes, over all Confinements and Com…lsions, over all the extremities of Force and Fury, while it keeps these wings unlimed, uncloged, unclipt by the filth or guilt of fleshly lusts, while it preserves it self from the Chains of Vice.

3. I come now to the third Circumstance of the Liberty of the Will.

Man is to be considered in three states,

1. Of pure Nature.

2. Of the Fall.

3. Of the restitution by Christ.

1. Man in the state of pure Nature, is an Image of God, an earthly Image, Gen. 1. God said, let us make man in our own likeness, after our own Image let us make him. Some interpret this of God, in the three Persons; others of God, Cum indumentis suis, as the Jews speak, of God in his holy Angels: Both together make a proper and full sense. God in the holy Trinity, God in all the various Virtues of the Divine Nature, spread first through the innumerable company of Angels, and by them through the whole Creation, sets himself as a seal upon man, in whom, as the Consummation and Crown of his whole Work, by this impression, he unites all into one Nature and Essence, which is a compleat Image of himself, and a comprehension of the whole Creation.

Thus now the Essence, the Faculties, the Operations of Man, are a shadowy similitude and figure of the Divine Essence, the Divine Virtues, and the Operations of the Divine Nature. Thus the Will of Man is a shadowy figure of the Divine Will; and its freedom, a shadowy resemblance of the Divine Liberty, like the colours of a Rainbow in the Cloud, which are so many reflections of the light of the Sun.

That which we say in natural Philosophy, Exiisdem nutrimur, ex quibus gignimur; We are bred and nourished, composed and continued by the same things, is most true in its application to the first or universal cause, with its effects. As the Sun is the formal, efficient p. 138cause of its beams, which are its shadowy Image in the air, and as the living face is the formal efficient cause of the face in the Glass, so is God to man, his Image and shadow. The continued out-shinings and Operations of the Sun, make, maintain, and act anew its beams every moment. The continued stream of Species, or beams from the living Face, every moment, form anew the Face in the Glass, with all its meen and motions. So doth the Divine Essence, the Diviue Understanding and Will every moment, by the continual influences of each moment, compose and conduct their Image, the Essence, the Understanding, the Will of Man, as the Face in the Glass, in their whole make, manner, and motions.

This is not a diminution, but the perfection of Liberty in the Will of Man; For God in his holy Angels, as superior and universal Causes, works upon the Will of Man, or rather in it, after the manner of an internal Principle. So that well known Maxim of the first Philosophy assures us, That the first and universal Cause, is of all Causes most intimate, with every effect. As in logical Definitions, the summum genus, or the highest nature, enters into the Definition, and so into the Essence of the lowest Species, or kind of things, inasmuch as it enters into, and constitutes the next genus, or nature, together with all the intermediate natures. For examples sake, Substance, and so Being it self, in its highest and most absolute form, is comprehended in, and constitutes the nature of man, descending into it, by the intermediate steps of Corporiety and Animality; that is, becoming first a Corporeal Substance, then a living Corporeal Substance, lastly, a rational, and so a man.

In like manner, so is the first and universal Cause the most internal and essential Principle of every effect, of all humane Operations, of all the acts of the Will. For it is the Essence of every Essence, the Being of every Being, the Act of every Act, the first, the formal Cause, the most immediate, the most intimate Cause of every Effect.

Let me add to this, for a Conclusion, as the Crown upon the liberty of man in pure nature, that his conformity to God, as an Image to his Original, is his Perfection; in this doth his Will become a most beautiful figure of the ever-glorious life, the Divine Will, that its Liberty is the free-springing, flourishing, and fruitfulness of it in all good, through the whole Latitude and Amplitude of the most spacious and blissful sphere of good; and so that a most pleasing and agreeable necessity of being good is inseparable from this sweet and ample freedom, while it continues in the state of a Divine Image and Figure.

2. In the Fall of Man we read, according to the Language of the Scripture, of his being deceived, being brought into servitude, being a Captive, in bondage to Vanity and Corruption, and of being dead. While they boast of Liberty, saith St. Peter, they themselves are servants to sin. For to that, of which a man is overcome, he is a servant. It is the Observation of Plato, That the names importing any thing of good, natively, signifie a freedom of motion, as foreign, good, from foreign, to run swiftly. On the otherside, the names of p. 139evil, express a restraint from motion, as foreign, malice, from foreign, to lie down upon the ground. In like manner, the Hebrew word for Darkness signifieth restraint, and confinement by force. All Liberty being an enlargement of Being, is comprehended in the nature of good alone. Neither is there any thing so inconsistent with Liberty, as evil, which is a privation of Being. Plato therefore rightly expresseth the Soul in her faln state, by the loss of both her wings, which are an Intellectual Light, and an Intellectual Love; or the Light of Reason in the Mind, spreading it self with a clear brightness, as one of the golden wings; and the force or freedom of the rational Appetite to good in the Will, extending it self in a pure flame, as the other of the golden wings.

To this I might add the testimony, which the Scripture gives of another seed, that of the Serpents springing up in the Soul unto its fall, in its fall, and through its fall; of the Soul being now the Child of the Devil, being implanted into the Powers of Darkness, of being acted by the Prince of the Power of the Air, the Spirit, which is now become its Root, its Head, its inward Principle.

3. The Soul of man in its Restitution by Christ, hath Jesus Christ as a quickning Spirit in him, as the principle of its Life, as its life it self. I (saith Christ) am the Resurrection and the Life. I (saith St. Paul) by the Law am dead to the Law. I am crucified with Christ, and now I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. He (saith St. Paul) that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit. Man is now become the heavenly Image of God, and one Spirit with Jesus Christ in Glory. As he hath now the Understanding of Christ, according to St. Paul; so hath he also the Will of Christ. This heavenly Bridegroom and heavenly Bride are one Divine Spirit, bear one Divine Image, have one Life, one Righteousness, one Glory, one Understanding, one Will, and dwell together in one Light, as God is Light, in one Love, as God is Love, in one immortal Joy, unspeakable and glorious.

The Soul now is a chast and spotless Bride, which bringeth forth all the rich and heavenly fruits of her Spirit, her Understanding, her Will, her whole Life, inward and outward, by her own heavenly Husband alone, by the sweet force of her Union with him, and the Divine Virtue of his embraces, that they may be fruits to God; that is, Divine Fruits, having the life, virtue, and sweetness of the Divine Nature in them, the form, and beauty of the Divine Nature upon them for a feast of Joys and Glory to God himself, to feast both his Eyes and his Heart.

If then the Soul restored be one Spirit with Christ, as in the Spirit of Christ, so in the Spirit of a Saint, the most pleasant liberty, and most potent necessity meet in one. The Divine Harmony of the supream and universal good is at once the spacious and blissful Field of this Paradisical freedom, and the golden Chain of this most grateful and most glorious necessity.

The Spirit of Christ is eternity it self, which as it spreads it self beyond and above all consinements to a Variety, endlesly fresh and flourishing, is the sweetest Liberty: As it comprehends all things p. 140in a most entire undivided Unity, the supream Crown and Circle of all true Life and Glory, is the highest necessity. Eternity hath nothing past, or to come, in respect to it self, being far above all Changes, all Beginnings and Ends of things. It is the supream Power, which rules them all, and the supream Wisdom which measures them.

The Soul then now become one Spirit with Christ, is in that Spirit, together with Christ, seated upon the Throne of Eternity; by its Union with this Spirit, it reigns upon this Throne over all things; by having this Spirit in it self, by being one Spirit with this Spirit, it hath in it self that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom, it is one with that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom which rules and measures all things.

Thus the glorious Bride of Eternity, having her heavenly Bridegroom in her embraces, cloathed and crowned with the same heavenly Image, being now in the true state of her own proper person, in her sirst and last state, in her own proper unvailed Substance, and Original here with her Bridegroom, is her own rule and measure in this heavenly Image, which is her true substantial self, her Eternity. She is also a rule and measure to her self in the earthly and shadowy Image, and in all her Pilgrimage, through the Regions of time below, whether they be the sweeter shadows of the Light above, or the melancholy shades of a deeper Darkness.

This is the true Liberty of Man, and the freedom of his Will, which is as the liberty and freedom of the true eternal good, diffusing it self into all the unsearchable riches of its manifoldly various Varieties, varying, setting off, sweetning and heightning it self by all the ravishing excesses of Harmony, of Light, of Love, by all the extreams of Darkness, Discord, Contrariety, and hate, reducing, and binding up these also into a most ravishing Harmony, by the excesses; by the victories and triumphs of the Divine Light and Love: So keeping together with this sportful Liberty, the golden, the firm Adamantine necessity of being it self still through all, that is good, the true and eternal good.

This Divine Liberty of the spiritual Bride, which is her Kingdom in her self over all, is divinely expressed by the blessed Bridegroom himself, in that most mysterious Song of himself, and his Love composed by himself in the Person of Solomon. He there in one place chargeth the Daughters of Jerusalem; that is, all the holy Angels and spotless Spirits, by which the affairs of the whole Creation are administred. By the Roes and Hindes of the field; that is, by all those Pleasures, Loves, and Lovelinesses with which he sports himself in the midst of them, in the Paradise above, who alone is the lovely Roe, and the lovely Hind, That they awake not, nor stir up his Love until he please, Cant. 2. 7. Thus it is manifestly in the Hebrew, although our Translators have changed the Feminine into the Masculine, and set the Bridegroom in the place of the Bride. But the sense which the words grammatically import is this; That, as the heavenly Bride is one Spirit with her Bridegroom, she sits above together with him upon his Throne in eternity from thence together w^th him, gives to all the heavenly Ministers their Commissions, p. 141that nothing moves in her own person, or round about her here below, as she is in her shadowy disguise and pilgrimage, but as it is ordered by her self above in the bosome of her Bridegroom. And according to that order executed by the heavenly attendance, which wait continually round about the Throne of her Bridegroom.

2. Reason. If the Will of Man be not free, and do not freely determine it self in all moral Actions, being undetermined in its own Principles, or by any superior Causes, what entrance doth sin find? How doth any thing of a stain or guilt lie upon the Soul? How is God just in the effects of his Wrath upon those that sin, if they sin by an inevitable necessity of Nature, and a predetermination by the connexion of Causes, or by the immediate and intimate operation of the first and universal Cause?

I shall give my Answer by several steps.

1. Sin hath no positive being; if it hath, God, who is the first and universal Being, the Fountain of Being, is directly, by himself, and not by accident only the Author of Sin, in its formality, as Sin. Otherwise we must with Manes set two Gods upon two distinct Thrones; one of Light or Good, the other of Darkness or Evil. Or we shall be forced with some Heathen Philosophers to establish two first Beings equally Uncreated, and eternal; One, God the Agent; The other, Matter the Patient. So where the Agent subdues the matter to it self, all Forms of Goodness, Beauty, Life, and Joy spring forth: where the matter invincibly resisteth the power of the Agent, there are the Regions of all Evil, Darkness, Death and Hell.

But this Heathenism and Manicheism are exploded, as by the universal consent of all sober Christians; so by the voice of reason it self. For if there be two first Beings, these agree in Being, they differ in being two. Being it self, as it is One, making both these one in its self, as it is pure, is before and above that state, in which it is allayed and abased, by being mixt and compounded with those differences which make it two. This then alone is the first and supream Being, the eternal One, the only true God.

2. If God then be not properly and directly the Author of Sin, Sin is no positive Being, but a privation only. So the Scriptures express it, which call it foreign, an irregularity, a falling short of the Glory of God, a missing of the mark, foreign. Divines generally teach us, That the Sin consisteth not in any Act, but in the Deordination, in the privation, a want of the due order, appertaining to the Act.

Sin then being nothing positive, but a meer privation, can have no efficient, but a deficient Cause only. This deficient Cause is that defectibility, which is inseparable from every created Nature. Darkness is the privation, or absence of Light, which naturally and necessarily accompanieth obscure and opact Bodies, as the Air, the Water, and the Earth. While the Sun shines upon them, this deficiency, or want of Light, discovereth not it self. All things are illuminated, and the natural obscurity of these Bodies illustrated by the Sun-beams; when these beams are withdrawn, or intercepted, p. 142then the defect of Light natural to these substances appeareth, and so the darkness is predominant. Thus every Creature hath in it self a tendency to annihilation; being of it self like the Earth before the beautiful work of the first day, which was light, void, and without form. Thus the Soul of Man in its Understanding, and in its Will, hath naturally of it self a tendency to unreasonableness, which is a degree of Annihilation, the privation of that two-sold Beauty; Truth in the Understanding, and goodness in the Will. While the Face of God shines upon the face of the Soul, by a continued irradiation, as in the first moment of the Creation, these Intellectual Forms of Divine Beauty, Truth, and Goodness flourish in the Soul, binding up the natural defectibility both of the Understanding and the Will, in the golden Chains of an heavenly Light, and heavenly Love; but in that moment, in which God turns away his Face, with-draws his beams, in the same moment the Soul of Man is left naked, its natural defectibility prevails; the privation, or absence of Truth, is now the darkness, the deformity of folly and falshood. The privation or absence of Goodness, is now the evil, and the disorder, into which, as a bottomless pit, the Understanding, and the Will, and the whole Soul with these miserably, endlesly sinks.

This is that horrible pit, out of which sin ariseth, the defectibility or nothingness of the Creature in it self. This is the way by which it ariseth upon the Soul, over-spreading it, and carrying it back into that pit of horrour, the deflectibility or nothingness of the Creature, prevailing in the absence of the Divine beams. The Royal Prophet divinely sings the penury of the Creature, and the Praises of the great Creator in this Mystery, Psal. 104. 29. Thou hidest thy Face, they are troubled, thou takest away their Breath or Spirit, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the Earth.

It is a truth, asserted by all Philosophers and Divines, That the Understanding acteth necessarily, being infallibly and irresistably reduced into act by its Object duly presented. The Scripture manifestly teacheth us, that sin entreth into the Soul by the Understanding. Those two places which I have cited above, are clear. The woman being deceived, was first in the Transgression. Sin deceived me, and so slew me. St. Paul speaketh in both these places of the first entrance of sin into the World, in the person of the first Woman, and in his own person, set, as a figure of all Mankind, as it was collectively and representatively in the first Adam.

Musaeus joyns these together, foreign. The Light going out, and Leander perishing. Man is deceived, and so slain by sin. As the Light of Truth goes out in the Understanding, the Life of Goodness dies in the Will. As the sight and light of the eye from the natural composition of the eye faileth, as the irradiations from the Sun, which it enjoyeth, either mediately, or immediately from the body of the Sun it self, or from other luminous bodies depending upon the Sun are obscured: So is the Souls eye the Understanding obscured, according to the proportion, in which the p. 143Divine illuminations in the way of Grace or Nature cease.

In these two first steps, I have endeavoured to make clear the nature of Sin, and the way of its entrance into the World, in which we see a most genuine conformity to the dependance of the Will, and of the whole Soul in all its changes and motions upon the first Cause, as a link in the mystical Chain of the order of Causes. The beauty and goodness of the Soul in its Understanding and its Will, flow in the golden Pipe of the order of Causes, as golden Oyl from the first cause, as the Olive-Tree flourishing upon the Mount of Eternity. As this golden stream from its Well-head fails, beauty and goodness are no more in the Soul. The deficiency or privation of these, is the evil of Darkness, Deformity, Sin and Death, to this intellectual and immortal Spirit.

But the knot seems to be tyed stronger: by this discourse man sins inevitably by the necessity of his nature. The first and free withdrawings of the Divine influence give way for the deflectibility of the Creature, to spring up into those defects, which are properly and formally the evils of Sin, the first and greatest evils, the fountains of all evils. How then doth shame or guilt lie upon the Creature? Why is God yet angry? How is he just in punishing? Is not the evil of sin from these grounds clearly cast upon God, as the Author of it? I shall endeavour to answer these Objections, and to remove these Difficulties in the three following steps.

3. I shall endeavour here to bring in some clear light into the obscure shades of this doubt, how shame and guilt lie upon the Soul, when it falls inevitably from the necessity of its nature.

Shame is a fear of Infamy, from a sense of Deformity. Deformity is the absence of the Divine Form originally present, and so proper to the subject. The subject of the form or beauty, while it is present, is also in its absence the subject of the privation and deformity. To the deformity is annexed the reproach or disesteem.

Esteem or disesteem is a right judgment, and so a value of each thing according to its proper state or nature. Where the sense of deformity is, there will also be the fear of infamy, and so the shame.

When Venus and Mars were discovered in Vulcan's Net, an immortal laughter arose among all the Gods, who were Spectators, as we read in Homer. When the Soul once, in its first Creation, cloathed with a Divine Beauty, and so placed in the Paradise of a Divine Light and Joy, seeth it self despoiled of this heavenly Robe, in the nakedness of those deformities, of the darkness into which, as hidden in the depth of its own nature, it sinks, when the Divine beams, that raised it out of that dark Deep, and enriched it with its heavenly Ornaments are retired, can it be without a sense of this deformed nakedness? without shame, without impressions made upon it, by the apprehension of that state, in which the innumerable company of heavenly Spectators now behold it, with a disesteem and aversion suitable to that state?

p. 144Neither is the justness of the aversion and disesteem in all the heavenly Spirits, or of the shame in this faln Spirit lessened, but rather encreased and heightned by this, that the deformity springeth up with an inevitable necessity from its own proper nature; for the discovery of that, which this faln Soul is in it self, together with every Creature; and the distinction now manifested between that, which is of God, as the Fountain in Eden, whence alone all Paradisical Beauties and Joys flow in the Creature, and that which is of the Creature it self, which is in it self a dark, horrid, and bottomless pit, where all wastness, woe, disorder, deformity, confusion, desolation, Deaths and Hells dwell together, and whence in swarms they break forth, as from a cursed womb, like the smoke and the locusts from the bottomless pit in the Revelation; the discovery of this, in the faln Spirits, makes their shame and abhorrency of themselves more just and high, as also the Songs of Praise which the heavenly Spirits day and night sing to their Creator and Preserver, as more highly just, so more highly sweet and glorious.

Thus much for the shame, let us now pass to the guilt. Guilt is the obligation of the Sinner to the Justice of God. Justice, and so most eminently the Divine Justice, which is the measure of all Justice, is that which giveth to every thing its due, that which is proper to it, its own. That is due to every thing, which is proper and suitable to it according to its place in the whole, for the preservation, restrauration, or perfection of the Order in the whole. When a Spirit, by the abstraction of the Divine Beauty and Virtue, is now sunk into its natural weakness and deformity; nothing now is any longer its own, nothing now is suitable to it, but that power of darkness, that principle of waste emptiness, of even dreaded and hateful nothings. Now the path in which the supream Justice, presiding over the Universal Order and Harmony of things, acts most pertinently towards it, is to abandon it to those powers of darkness, which rise up from its own proper Root, to display themselves more fully upon it in their ugly and hateful shapes, in their tormenting horrors, in their horrid torments, the dissolutions of the blissful Unity, in distracting divisions and confusions; the extinguishing of the sweet and beautiful Light in affrightful shades of amazing darkness.

The chief skill in Pictures consisteth in the evenness and justness of placing the shades, that according to the degrees of the declining Light, the shades may gradually increase, until they sink into the deepest obscurity, or be bounded by a new light springing up out of these shades: Such is the Law of the Divine Justice, which is the great and wise Spirit of the Universal Harmony, in this Divine Poem or Picture, the work of the Creation, as the heavenly form of goodness or beauty in the best and most beautiful season which draws it self from any part of this work. Privation, the principle and form of all evil, spreads its black-wings over it, encreasing its hellish shades and darknesses upon it, in the bosome of which it hatcheth all the ugly Births of deformity, woe and horror, with an amazing interminating infiniteness, until the sacred Light of p. 145the Divine goodness and beauty arising upon it, bound those unformed shades, reducing all to, and binding up all with the Adamantine Chains of a triumphant Harmony in the Glory of God.

In this third step we have endeavoured to fix the shame and guilt of sin upon the Sinner, but glory upon the Divine Justice in the sufferings which come by sin.

4. Step. We are in our next step to give an answer for God to those, who in their Expostulations ask, why he is yet angry? The solution of this doubt is obvious and common. Anger resteth in the bosome of Fools. Fury is not in him, who worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will. His Wisdom and his Will are both one. His Justice and his Power are both one, and one with the other two, his Wisdom and his Will. As he is one pure Act of Omnipotency, of Beauty, of Love, of Joy, of all Excellencies, at their greatest heighth, and in one, so is he Wisdom, Will, Justice, Power, all in one. He is Power, as he is a pure Act of Almightiness. He is Wisdom, as he is a pure Act of highest and most Universal Harmony. He is Justice, as he is a pure Act of entire and most perfect Order. He is Will, as he is a pure Act of highest and most diffusive goodness, of the richest, sweetest, and fullest loveliness, which are the proper Objects, and so perfections of the Will. He is Will, as he is a pure Act of most heightned and comprehensive Love, Joy, Complacency, which are the most proper and perfect Operations of the Will. Fury then is not in him, who thus worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will, where Justice, Power, Wisdom and Will meet in one, at their purest heights, in their greatest freedoms, in their most proper and perfect Operations. Anger is then attributed to God, per Anthropopathiam, while by the suiting of the Language to the capacity of the Hearers; God is represented to us in the form, and in the fashion of a man. It is also a metonymical way of speaking, which expresseth the effect by the cause. So the Scripture speaking with the Tongue of a Man, as the Jews express it, representeth those effects of the Divine Providence, by the names of the anger of God, the wrath of God, which answer to those effects that commonly proceed from anger and wrath in men. Job faith in one place, When the scourge falleth alike upon the innocent and the wicked, God laugheth at it. When wicked men suffer for their sins, when innocent persons are refined by their sufferings; the Eye of God is fixed upon his own Divine Loveliness and Glory alike in both. The purest and most perfect Love acteth him toward this most pure and perfect Loveliness and Glory alike in both, from the meeting and blissful embraces of these two; this Love and Loveliness in the Divine Nature, his Joy and Complacency is alike in both, equally full, equally at the heighth. A Divine Philosopher, with a pleasant and beautiful Allegory, teacheth us, That the expansion of Light, in the heavenly Bodies, which is the Act of the Angelical World, in this their most beautiful Figure, is Risus Coelorum, the laughter of the Heavens. God maketh every thing beautiful in its proper place and time, to kill, as to make alive, unformed, deformed privations, as the fairest p. 146and most flourishing forms. In every Act of Providence, in every accident from the beginning to the end of things, he equally preserveth and perfecteth the Divine Order and Harmony. This golden Harmony, extended like the sweet Light of Heaven over all things, is as a Divine laughter, the complacency of the Divine Nature in its Work, in its Image, in it self.

I have yet one thing more to say, before I take my other step. We learn from Philosophers, That heat and cold, which continually fight in the Elements below, are in the heavenly Bodies, but after so eminent a manner, that there they meet and enfold each other with a most harmonious agreeableness. By the Laws of Divinity we are answerably taught, That Anger and Love, as all forms of things, most discordant in the Creatures, are first in the Divine Nature. But they are there with an eminency, with a transcendency, in which they are refined and heightned far above all imperfections. Here they all meet, as most grateful and most agreeable Varieties in the entire and undivided Unity of the same eternal Light, of the same eternal Love, of the same eternal God. As from this heighth of a most perfect Unity, these Divine Varieties bring forth their various effects in shadowy resemblances here below, they make the figure of the whole divinely one, and divinely beautiful. As Divine Seals, they likewise impress the figure of their own Divine Unity upon each single effect.

Thus the whole work in general, each single effect in particular, is a divinely beautiful figure of the Divine Beauty shining with delightful beams upon those Eyes and Spirits, which anointed with a Divine Knowledge, see the golden and secret Seal, this glorious and sacred impression of the Divine Unity upon it.

Thus we have spoken of the shame and guilt of Sin, as also of Anger, and in part of the Justice of God; concerning which there remaineth more to be said.

5. Step. We have yet before us that great Deep, which swalloweth up all Understandings, the face of which seemeth covered with a thick and impenitrable darkness. Let us pray to the Father of Lights for irradiations from his eye, that so this unfathomable Deep may discover it self to us, as a blissful Deep of purest, clearest, and sweetest Glory.

If God first from the counsel of his own Will alone withdraw those beams, which are all our Light and Beauty, and we then by the inevitable necessity of our Natures wander as deformed shades in a wild darkness, through the Regions of Sin, Death and Hell: Is not God, now in a moral sense clearly and fully, the sole Author of Sin and Evil? This is the knot which indeed standeth in need of the Rosy Fingers of the heavenly Morning, the beams of the eternal Day to unty it. How shall we in this place vindicate the Justice and Goodness of God? I have here three things to propound.

1. Let us impartially and ingeniously consider whether the freedome of the VVill, to determine it self absolutely in all its Acts, reflect a greater Glory upon the Justice and Goodness of God, than the VVill p. 147predetermined in its Essence, in its superior Causes, in the first and universal Cause. That we may make a clearer judgment in this case, let us compare these two different states of the VVill, together with several Antecedents and Consequencies, by placing them both in our view, one by another, as plainly, within as narrow a compass as we can.

Let us set that Free-will in our eye after this manner. God brings forth an Intellectual Spirit, with a Divine Light of Truth in its heavenly Beauties, shining upon its Understanding, with a Divine Love of the true Good, with all its heavenly Sweetnesses springing in its VVill. He now sets down the will of this Spirit upon such a ground of indifferency and absoluteness in it self, that being undetermined into any forms of good or evil, the most heavenly, or the most hellish, it is equally free for it in the face of all this blessed Light shining in the Understanding, in the midst of all the heavenly sweetnesses flowing from the bosome of the true Good, through the VVill it self, to cast it self forth from the bosome of the eternal Good. Appearing thus in its own naked and Divine Form, and to cast it self into the embraces of the foulest evil, the fountain of all evil; presenting it self, as evil, in its own most direful and haggish shapes. A great part of Intellectual Spirits, far the greatest part of humane Spirits, placed by the Divine Providence in this state, refuse the good, choose the evil, so render themselves obnoxious to the Divine Justice, and become by the pursuits and inflictions of that Avenger, the lost Subjects of all horror and woes without end.

Let us now in the like manner cast our eye upon the Will, predetermined in its Causes. God brings forth an Intellectual Spirit compounded, Ex aliquo Dei, & ex aliquo sui; With something of God, something of its own. That of God in it, is all the good of it, the clear Face of the eternal Truth shining in its Understanding, as in a Christal Mirror, the sweet flame of pure Goodness, and as pure a love to this Goodness, burning in its VVill, as upon the golden Altar in the Temple of God, the beams of this Beauty, and the flames of this Love unitedly spreading, varying, and forming themselves through the whole Person and Life of this Spirit, into all Divine Virtues and Joys, by which it becomes as God himself descended into a God-like Image of God himself. This is that of God in the Creature.

That, which is ofits own in this Intellectual Spirit, is beneath all this heavenly beauty and goodness, a deflectibility inseparable from the nature of the Creature, bound up only by the heavenly charms of this Divinity resting upon the Person of this Spirit. God in the depth of a design, perhaps too blessed, and too glorious to be penetrated and fathomed by us; as the eternal Sun ascends up on high, going away from this Spirit, and carrying away with him his whole train of immortal beams with a Divine Light, Heat and Virtue. Now like a mournful and hated darkness from below, the natural defectibility of this Spirit covers the whole face of it, making it like Hell it self, the seat of all evils both of Sin and Suffering, which lie eternally p. 148upon innumerable multitudes. Let us now consider the two-fold Law, or rule of Justice and Goodness, by which this is to be tryed. The general Rule, or Law of Justice is this, To give to every thing its due, or its own. Solomon expresseth this Rule of Justice from the Mouth of God in his Proverbs, after this manner, With-hold not good from them to whom it is due, or from the Owners thereof, when it is in thine hand to do it. Divines interpret those Owners, to be all persons in want, all Subjects in any capacity of receiving any good from us. Beneficence, or a disposition to do good to all, is with the Heathen Philosphers a branch of this Vertue of Justice.

The Law of God, which is the Rule of Justice, commands to love our Neighbour as our self. St. Paul interprets this Neighbour to be every other, Rom. 13. 8. He that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law. The Jews teach us, that the Law is founded in the Name; that is, in the Nature of God. Man was made in the Image of God. The Perfection then of the humane Creature, is the Image of that Perfection, which is in the Divine Nature; the Law of the humane Nature is the transcript of the Divine Nature. Our Lord Jesus interprets this Universal Law of humane Commerce and Justice among men, Thou shalt love thy Neighbour, after this manner, Love your Enemies, do good to them that hate you. He layeth the ground of this Universal Justice in the Divine Nature, That you may be the Children of your Father which is in Heaven. He adds for a clearer Conviction, If you love them that love you, do not even the Publicans the same. He concludes, by referring the perfection of men to the Divine Perfection, as its Original and Law; Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Thus we see the Rule of Justice with God, and with men, to give our Love, and all good according to our utmost power to every other, as to the Owner of that love and good, to whom they are due.

2. The second Rule or Law is, that of Goodness. The Law of Goodness and its Essence is to diffuse and communicate it self. The law of each thing is to act according to its nature, of Light to shine; of sweet Waters, to send forth sweet waters; of good, to do good. This Law is most deeply rooted, and highly radiant in the Divine Nature, inasmuch as God is the Chief, the Universal, the only good. Accordingly he makes his Rain, his Sun, both Coelestial and Supercoelestial in their season, to fall and to shine upon the Just and the Unjust.

Having stated the Case between Free-will, and the Will predeterminated in its Causes, and having set the Rule, by which the Case is to be tryed; Let us come to the Point, in which we must joyn Issue.

1. Both Cases agree in four grand Circumstances.

First, In both Cases, God makes man, and the Will of Man from nothing, according to the absoluteness of his Will and Power.

Secondly, The event, which is eternal ruine and torment to the greatest part of Mankind, is alike certain to both, by a certainty of infallibility.

p. 1493. God before, and in the making of his work, clearly seeth, and perfectly understandeth, that this will be infallibly the event of his Workmanship.

Can it then with any reason be thought that the event of the work of an infinite Wisdom fore-seen, should not be agreeable to the design of that Wisdom, and the Will of that infinitely Wise Spirit, whose Power is as infinite as his Wisdom?

4. God could have made man otherwise in a Divine necessity of being good and blessed like himself, in a confirmed state of Grace and Glory, like the Elect Angels and Saints. These are the Circumstances in which both Cases agree.

2. The grand d…fference between the two Cases, where they joyn Issue is this. In that Case of Free-will Man perisheth, because God with-holds the good which he hath in himself, and might have given to him, that is a confirmation in good. In the other case of the Will predetermined, Man perisheth, because God withdraws the good which he had once given him.

There are two Fathers, with their two little Children; one Father setteth his Child down so, that he may run into a pleasant Field, or a devouring Flood. He fore-seeth, that he will certainly run, not into the Field, but into the Flood, he suffers him to run and perish in the Flood, when he may as easily prevent him, by laying his hand upon him, or taking him into his arms. The other Father holdeth his Child fast and safe in his arms for a while over the cruel Flood, then he casteth him not in, but he taketh away his arms, and leaves him by his own weight necessarily to drop into the Flood and perish there.

I appeal now to every equal and impartial Judge, whether both these Fathers seem not both guilty or innocent? Whether they be not both likely to be cleared or convicted, if they be tryed by those fore-mentioned Rules of Justice and Goodness? Is not the two-fold Plea of both these Wills of equal force against the Justice and Goodness of God? 1. Why hath he made me thus certainly to perish? What is it to me, whether this certainty be a certainty of infallibility, only from the mutability of my nature; or a certainty of inevitableness from the necessity of nature, while I certainly perish? 2. Why is he yet angry? who hath resisted his Will? Is not the certain event of his Work clearly fore-seen by him from the beginning, interpretatively his Will?

Which Opinion shall we prefer? That of the Will predetermined gives to God the full Glory of his Soveraignty, Absoluteness, Wisdom, Power, making his work in the whole, and in every part from the beginning to the end, one entire piece, altogether dependent upon himself, wrought throughout by himself, and conducted from one supream principle, by one universal Form of the Divine Understanding, and the Divine Image, to one Universal and Ultimate end, the Divine Glory. But it seemeth to cast an imputation upon the Divine Justice and Goodness.

The other Opinion of Free-will seemeth to violate the Soveraignty and Absoluteness of God, making his actings dependent upon the p. 150actings of Creature: The Power of God, in giving to the Creature the determination of it self with an independence upon him in these Cardinal Acts of the Will, upon which the whole Circle and Globe of things, in the Divine Love, Justice and Wrath, in the happiness or misery of Man from eternity, is turned about: His Wisdom, while his work hath breaches and gaps in it, like a Chain, whose links are not fastned one in another, while the Harmony is thus broken, while all the great effects and end of his work are casual, uncertain in their Causes and in their Nature, inasmuch as all depend upon the free and fortuitous motions of the Will, independent upon, and undetermined by all preceding, or superior Causes, even the first and universal Cause it self. Together with all this Cloud which the Opinion of Freewill casts upon the Glories of God in these other Attributes, it doth not at all excel the other Opinion in clearing the Glory and Justice of the Divine Goodness. But while as with triumphant flourishes, by Rhetorical Reproaches, it insulteth upon the other Opinion, as equalling God in savage cruelness to the most arbitrary Tyrants, to the most inhumane and ferine Man-eaters; It leaveth God equally exposed to the same Reproaches, and it self to the imputations of the same Blasphemies. I have now finished the first thing which I had to propound in answer to that Argument against the predetermination of the Will, which is taken from the goodness and justice of God.

2. The second thing which I have to propound is this, the holy Scripture in many places seems plainly to assert the Divine Conduct, with a potent and irresistable efficacy, in this dark part of things, the evil, as also the Glory of the Divine Justice and Goodness in this conduct equal with that in the good. I will instance in three Scriptures only.

1. My first instance is, that of Solomon, Eccles. 3. There is a season for every thing, and a time for every purpose. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to kill, and a time to heal: A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embraces: A time to destroy, and a time to preserve: A time to love, and a time to hate, from the first to the ninth verse. He, that is, God hath made every thing good in his time, verse 11, I know, that all which God hath done, this shall be for ever.

I shall draw forth this Scripture into a few brief Maxims, which seem to arise naturally and clearly out of it.

1. There is all Variety in the Unity of the Divine work, a Variety extending it self to the remotest, the highest Contrarieties Affirmative or Negative, to the most distant perfections and privations. So the holy Spirit speaketh expresly in the general, every thing, every purpose, all that can fall within the conception or comprehension of the vastest and most incomprehensible Spirit hath its season and time. So the holy Spirit speaketh in particular love and hatred, war and peace, embracing, and abstaining from embracing, life and death, destruction and salvation, have their time and season.

Do not these particular instances expresly define the highest Contrariety Affirmative, or Negative, of good, and evil, in their greatest Latitude, and most universal Nature?

p. 1512. God makes all this Variety and Contrariety, and that in the lowest Region also, even under the Sun, where it appears in a dark tempestuous scene of the greatest disorder and confusion; There is a time, saith Solomon, for all, and a season for every purpose. The word Season signifieth a set measured time, like the times in Musick; the time or season of each thing is its duration. Duration is the mode or measure of the Essence, and so really the same with the Essence, the Essence measured and bounded. As Essences and Habits, so also have privations their measure and bounds, as Rests and Stops have time in Musick. Every Essence is the Birth of an Understanding, of which it beareth the impression and Seal. It is the work of an Understanding alone to give measure and bounds to things. That then, which setteth the time for all Varieties and Contrarieties, Perfections and Privations, which consequently maketh and formeth them, can be no other than the Divine Understanding, God in his essential and eternal Word, which alone is above and before all things: So we read here, concerning all these Contrarieties, That God hath made them beautiful … their time. God then hath made them.

God maketh all Contrarieties Affirmative and Negative, Perfections and Privations; but after a contrary manner. He maketh Perfections, as the Sun maketh light in the Air, after an Affirmative manner, by a positive presence, power and influence.

He maketh privations, as the Sun maketh darkness and night, after a Negative manner by his absence, by a drawing in his power, and binding up his sweet influence. But this negation also, and so the privations, which flow from it are called here by Solomon, (the Master of all Wisdom) Humane and Divine Purposes. There is a season (saith he) for every purpose; then he instances in the Contrarieties following, Privations then are Divine purposes; that is, Designs, Contrivances, Divine Forms, designed, contrived and measured in the Divine Mind. Upon this ground some Philosophers teach us, That God is a transcendent Good above all Beings, who comprehends Originally in himself not only all Beings, but all privation of Being, which themselves also, as darkness, night, absence and death in their place and time, are Forms of good, although not Forms of Being and Divine Forms, Forms in Divinity, although not natural Forms, nor Forms in natural Philosophy. But now I am passing to my third Conclusion.

Thirdly, God maketh all things, the Varieties and Contrarieties, beautiful in their time. They are the express words of Solomon, from the heighth of all created Wisdom, in its single state; They are the words of the Uncreated Wisdom it self, speaking by Solomon, God hath made all beautiful in his time, verse 11. This is manifestly spoken with respect to the general All in the first verse, and the particular Alls of the highest Contrarieties, of the most distant privations, enumerated in the following verses; the time of each Being respecteth its relation to the whole. Beauty is an Harmony, and consisteth in the suitableness or conveniency of the several parts with each other, and with the whole. Suitableness is a similitude, similitude is an Unity p. 152in Variety, an Unity of Form in distinct Subjects, as the same sweetness and colour in several Flowers; The same beautiful light of knowledge, the same pure and lovely sweetness of Spirit, which makes a Divine Friendship, the highest suitableness and similitude. Philosophy teaches us, That the first Good, and the first Unity, are the most proper Names of the most high God, having both the same sense and force; It teaches us also, That the first Beauty is an effulgency from the first Good; the first Good, or the first Unity shining out into a distinct Image of it self, which is the first Distinction or Variety, and so the supream, the most ample Variety. All Beauty then in its kind and degree is an Unity, diffusing it self, and shining forth into a Variety, where from the whole, and from each part it reflecteth it self upon it self, with all its united Vertues, Proportions, and Sweetnesses, meeting every where in each point. Upon this ground we are taught, That the first Understanding is the first Beauty, and that every Beauty is the Birth and Object of that Understanding alone, at least in some impressions or foot-steps of it. For Beauty being the meeting of many parts or proportions in one undivided Point, or an Unity in Variety, can neither be, nor be discerned, where there is not a spiritual Form or Substance, which is it self an undivided Unity. Then doth the Beauty spring with a delightful sweetness both in the Subject and in the sense, and all the various perfections or proportions of the whole, and of the several parts concentring in each part, giving a perfection to it, and receiving a perfection from it; and thus reflecting the distinct and united perfections of the whole, and of all the parts, mutually and endlesly upon each other, and so shine forth, carrying as in triumph upon every sparkling beam the multiplied reflections, as so many Coelestial Venus's exactly answering one another, and all in one, into the beholding and ravisht eye.

But this will be confirmed, and made more clear to us, in that which followeth.

Fourthly, God maketh all things for eternity, verse 14. I know that whatsoever God doth, that shall be for ever; God's ever is eternity. Eternity, as we learn from Philosophers and Divines, is a perfect Unity, comprehending all Variety within it self, even Time also, with all its successions, divisions, and distances without and above time, succession, division or distance. It is defined to be Tota totius boni simul, & semel possessio; A whole possession of the whole good at once, and in one.

Thus God worketh all things from eternity in eternity, and for eternity; Thus he maketh every thing beautiful, as it is seen in the light of eternity, which alone is the light of Truth: Time being the shadow of Eternity, and a Vail upon it, for in this light, in which the Works of God are all wrought, in which alone a true judgment may be made of them, every particular is seen, as it lies in the whole, as a part of the Variety in the whole Variety, and in the Unity: The whole Variety and the Unity appears entire and compleat in every part, so the fulness of the Divine Work, the fulness p. 153of the Divine Beauty and Glory, spread through the whole Work, is united in every part, and fulfilleth all in all.

Object. Perhaps you will say, Are moral privations as well as natural, is sin also comprehended in this discourse? Hath God also set a season for that, and made that beautiful in its time? Then is it no more sin, if it be not a deformity; Then is it a grace, if it be a beauty; A Divine Grace, if it be a Divine Beauty; And a Divine Work, if it be made by God? How genuinely does the Opinion of the Ranters flow from these Principles? That then only we see things in the Light of the Gospel, the only true and eternal Light, when we see no more any distinction between Good and Evil, Grace and Corruption, the deformity of Sin, and the beauty of Holiness, the Works of God, and the Works of the Devil, all (say they) seen by an eye truly illuminated is a Divine Work, a Divine Grace and Beauty.

Answ. I reply first in general to ranting Principles and Practices, as St. Paul doth with abhorency and detestation, God forbid, far be it, far be these Principles from the mind and life of every good man, as they are far from the Divine Truth, from the Mind, Life, and Work of God, formed by the Devil, from a Seed of enmity to God, unto the Glory of the Gospel, in the Womb of the blackest darkness, in the darkest depth of the bottomless pit. But my more particular and distinct Reply is this.

1. If sin be a positive Form of Being, then it is originally and eternally comprehended in the first Being; the only Fountain of Being, it floweth from, it lieth in the frame and order of the Universal Being; It beareth upon it the impression and character of the first Being with its Beauty, it beareth a part with the whole or universal Being, making up the perfection of the whole, and cloathed with it, crowning it, and crowned by it. All this upon that supposition will necessarily be true of it, most properly, most directly by it self, and not indirectly, or by accident only. But according to the narrow compass of my knowledge or understanding, this supposition and consequent both are contrary to the common current, and general stream, of Philosophy and Divinity.

2. If sin be a privation of Grace, it is to be considered two wayes:

1. In Principio. 1. In its Principle.

2. In Termino. 2. In its Term or Subject.

1. The privation of Grace is to be considered in its Principle. As a privation hath no Being, so it hath no Principle in a proper sense, if we may apply such language to it. Privation, which is no Being with its particular modification and bounds, hath for its proper Principle Non-entity, or not Being, in its universal sphere or compass, as the narrow and mid-land Seas are divided from the vast unbounded Ocean.

But the Principle, from which the privation of Grace ariseth in its Subject, by consequent and by accident, is Grace it self, in its first Principle, with-holding, or with-drawing it self. The Principle of p. 154Grace is God alone, the Privation of Grace, as it is the with-drawing, or the with-holding of this Principle, in its Operations or Influences, so it is immediately consequent to, originally comprehended in the Acts of the Divine Will, and the Divine Wisdom. This privation of Grace, lying thus in the Principle of Grace, comprehended in the Acts of the Divine Wisdom and Will, as their term and bound, hath its part and place in the Divine design: It is now and here in this Prospect, a part of the Variety, as a Contrariety; It lies within the embraces of the whole Variety, it lies in the bosom of the Unity, which is the Spring, the Seat, the Throne of the Variety. So the whole Variety in the Unity, the Unity in its full Variety, and at once, after the manner of eternity, spring up in it, shine through it, look forth clearly and compleatly in the face of it, richly cloath it all over. After this manner is the privation of Grace, in its Principle, in the Acts of the Divine Will, and the Divine Wisdom, a Divine Workmanship, a Divine Beauty. Agreeable to this, is that common Principle of our Divines, That God hath his influence upon Sin to order it, to bound it, in all its circumstances, to reduce the disorder of it into order, to make it serviceable to the order and the beauty of the whole.

In this sense Proclus affirms in his Divinity, That there is neither Privation or Corruption, foreign, in Totis, that is according to his sense. In Divine Intellectual Spirits, which by the light of Eternity comprehend in themselves in one view the whole Work of God, the whole nature of things, with all their Varieties and Contrarieties, as an entire piece, an entire Image. The Divine Workmanship, the Divine Beauty of the supream Spirit, whose Unity is figured upon. For, here the Divine Form and Beauty of the whole, resting upon every Privation or Corruption, makes that also in the whole a Divine Unity and Perfection.

2. Privation is to be considered in Termino vel Subjecto; that is, in the Intellectual Spirit, as the Seat or Subject. Divines say, That the Act of creating, as it is in God, its Principle is God; as it is in the Creature, where it is terminated, is the Creature. In like manner, the Privation of Grace, as it hath its beginning in the Author of Grace, from an Act of the Divine Wisdom and Will, designing, or determining the with-holding of it, is thus Divinely-beautiful and good. The same privation of Grace, as it is terminated and seated in a created Spirit, is an evil of Sin, the highest deformity, the first, the greatest evil, the fountain of all evils, most properly, in its own nature, and in the Eye of God; As being the first and foulest privation of the first Good, or the heighest Beauty, and the Fountain of all following Privations, extending their poisonous and baleful shades to the bottomless pit, to the nethermost Hell.

God saith in the Prophet Isaiah of Nebuchadnezzar, he is a Rod in my Hand, but he thinketh not so. Nebuchadnezzar was, as in the hand of God, but as a Musicians Quill. The Acts of Enmity, Tyranny and Cruelty exercised by him, and upon the people of God, were from the Divine Musician, the Master of the universal Musick, skilful p. 155stroaks and tender touches upon his Harps or Lutes, which are his Saints, making the universal, the eternal Harmony compleat in their Persons, and in his whole Work. But the same Acts as they were from Nebuchadnezzar, were a disorder, a breach of the Harmony, a Contrariety of an enmity, which is the highest opposition to it. In the same sweet, and beautiful sense of Divine Love, that loveliest figure of our Lord Jesus saith to his Brethen concerning their savageness, selling, sacrificing him to their envy and malice, directed against the Divine Glory, declaring it self in him by heavenly Visions; Ye thought evil against me, God meant it unto good, Gen. 50. 20. Thus he comforted them, concerning their greatest sins, who were now humbled for them.

After the same manner, to the same end, the Truth himself, the Lord Jesus by his Spirit, striketh upon the heart of the Jews, who had crucified him, that now themselves might bleed inwardly from the sense of that precious blood of his, which they had shed, Act. 2. 23. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God, ye have taken, and with wicked hands crucified. See that Act, the most bloody and direful that ever the Sun saw, by which the Suns Sun in Flesh, and on Earth suffered; the most mournful and tragical Ecclipse, attributed at once to the determinate Counsel of God, and to the wickedness of men. Here that was eminently true, which was represented by the former Scripture in the figure, that which men thought evil against their Jesus, their only Joy, their God, their only Good and Glory; the same thing (the cursed sale and cruel sacrificing of their God) he meant unto good, to bring to pass, as at this day, to save much people alive, to bring many Sons to eternal Life and Glory.

A learned man cites from Aristotle in his Metaphysicks, a passage, in which he affirms, That all the several parts are referred to the good of the order in the whole as the end of all. Upon this he discants, that this good of order depends upon the vilest, as well as the most precious things, that it consisteth in the interval and proportion between these. That in respect to this order the vilest things are determined and framed with the same most exact skill, as the most curious things: Thus the sufferings of Joseph, the crucifying of Jesus, as they lay eternally determinate in the determinate Counsel of God, designed and fashioned there unto good, the highest Good, the supream End, the universal Order, the Divine Glory, which wraps up in it the blessedness of all the Saints; so it self was a part of the Order, a part of the Glory, a Grace, a Beauty, a Perfection, in the universal Order and Divine Glory.

But as this proceeds from the hearts and hands of Men, the Instruments of it, who like Nebuchadnezzar, thought not so, like Josephs Brethren thought it for evil, like the Crucifiers of Christ, were wicked in it; It is a deordination, a disorder, a real evil, the worst of evils, not only a falling short of the Glory of God, which is the Divine Image and effulgency in the Harmony of things, as St. Paul describes Sin, nor yet a transgression and breach only of the Law, which is the rule p. 156and measure of this Order, as another Apostle defines sin, but an Enemy to it, as all sin is in its root and essence, according to the Language of St. Paul in another place. So the discord in Musick is truly in its own particular nature, and apart a discord; so a black crooked line, a dark shade, is in it self truly black, crooked, dark, offensive to the eye, contrary to Light, Rectitude and Beauty; although the discord be a part of the Harmony, this line and shade a part of the Beauty in the whole.

Object. But you will perhaps say, All these things seem hitherto to confirm the Ranters in their licentious Principles and Practices. For, why should not Sinners with the freedom of all sinful pleasures, rest and rejoyce in the absoluteness of the Divine Conduct, the Perfection of the Divine Order and Beauty, which giudes them through all, which accompanieth them in all, as the Motion and Musick of those heavenly Spheres, the Divine Wisdom, Power and Goodness, comprehending all things with their courses, as Stars fixed in them; what place is there here for shame, guilt, displeasure, or punishments?

Answ. I am sensible of the weight of this Work, in which I have by degrees engaged my self, and how unfit my shoulders are for it. When that wise Queen of Sheba saw the attendance of Solomons Servants, and the order of his House, there was no more any spirit left in her: What then is the order in the House of God, in his Work from the beginning to the end of it? What the attendance and ministry of all the parts of this Work, as the Servants in this House, according to the Divine Order? What Cherubim or Seraphim would have any more any Spirit left in it, while it contemplates this Order, which at the height of its most ravishing Contemplations remains still, for the excess of Glory, incomprehensible to it? This is that Wisdom in a mystery, which the most princely Spirits, and Understandings of the whole Creations, in their natural capacities, are unable to take in. What then is my spirit? what my faculty? that I should be capable of taking off the Vail from this Divine Chain of heavenly Pearl, so closely and curiously set; to behold in my self, by any imperfect glimps; to present any glance of it, in its Divine lustre and order to other eyes, and to preserve it from the feet of Swine, or mouth of Dogs? What am I? that I should attempt to take the Cloud off from this heavenly Paradise, which is in the midst of us, before us, round about us, in which all things, and motions of things spring and flourish as Divine Plants, in a Divine Order, to open it to the view of the Sanctified Beholder, and at the same time to defend it from prophane Spirits, by the flaming Sword, by the sparkling, penetrating, consuming, or refining beams of a Cherubim?

We will, therefore, penetrate so far as we may into this bright Deep, which so delightfully swalloweth up the most Angelical Understanding: may our dependance be upon that Spirit alone, which moveth upon the shining Face of this Deep, and is a Baptism of heavenly fire, purifying the beloved Soul, illuminating with an heavenly Light the purified Eye, enflaming with heavenly Love the purified Heart, p. 157and so initiating him into these holy mysteries; But keeping off every profane Eye and Heart, by darkning, dazeling, affrighting, and burning upon them.

Divine Truth is as a Rose-Tree, which as it hath its beautiful and perfumed Roses, so it hath prickels to guard those Roses from rash and rude hands. My Answer then to the fore-mentioned Objection shall be divided into these gradual steps.

First, No Sinner in a sinful state, no Soul in any act of sin, can see the Divine Order in the Work of God, which Order is Jesus Christ, the Image, the Wisdom, the Glory of the invisible God, figuring himself upon the whole Work, from the beginning to the end, as one entire, lively, living Picture of himself, himself being the Life of it, and shining in the face of it. Sin is the Souls falling short of the Glory of God into the darknesses below, being unable to raise its Understanding to the Beauty of this Light. Sin is the violation or breach of this sacred Harmony, by which the Soul cuts off, and separates it self from it, by which it over-casts the Glory, with a deep stain and a black Cloud, which take it altogether out of its sight, all defilement is an undue mixture. Every sin confounds the Soul, it wraps it up in an universal confusion; sin is an enmity to this Harmony of things. It is a dark confusion from below, rising up as a poysonous vapour to over-spread the pure Light of this heavenly Order. The Divine Order then and all things, as they lie in the Divine Order, fight against sin and the sinner, their common and only Enemy; As the Stars in their courses fought against Sisera. St. John, the beloved Disciple, having first declared God to be Light, without the mixture of any Darkness at all; Then testifieth, That if we say that we have fellow ship with him, and walk in darkness, we lye, and do not the truth. Sinners universally in the Scriptures are stiled Children of Darkness, and not of the Light. The Light of the Divine Order and Glory, the acting of a part in this Divine Order, in the light and truth of it, are inconsistent in any Spirit with the darkness of sin.

2. If any Spirit by the highest improvement of its Intellectual Powers, by Angelical assistances and heightnings, by the more sublime and supernatural, though common illuminations of the Spirit of Grace himself, form to it self an heavenl… Image of this Divine Order, and that anointed by the same Operations of the same Spirit with an heavenly Beauty, Sweetness and Virtue: This Spirit thus far will be sanctified by this sacred Light, being taken up out of the tempestuous Seas of its sins, into the sweet and pure, the calm and clear stream of this Harmony, as into a River of Milk and Honey. But if this Spirit do take from hence arguments to sin, encouragements to sin; now it no more seeth a right Image of this heavenly Glory, no not in the notion of it. As St. Paul speaketh of the Gospel, that which shines in this Spirit now, this Image perverteth, and so the Order is changed into a disorder and confusion.

That Divine figure, sprung from the holy Spirit, is withdrawn, together with that Spirit, a Spirit from below is sprung up, as by an p. 158hellish Magick or Inchantment, into a counterfeit but perverted representation of that heavenly Beauty. Thus sin deceives this Spirit, then defiles it, and so slays it, by extinguishing the sweet of sight of its true Light.

Let such Spirits tremble, lest they be found in the number of those unhappy Spirits, who having tasted the good Word of God, and the Powers of the World to come, tread under their feet the Son of God; that good Word of God, that Wisdom of God, that golden Chain of heavenly Harmony, in Divine Providence, and offer injury and dispight to the Spirit of Grace, by which the Son of God sweetly lives, and shines in the sacred order of things, and by which they were once sanctified, having been washt in this Spirit of Grace, the Fountain of this lovely Order, from the Pollutions of the World. Are not these the Spirits upon whom wrath is to come so long as Christ shall Reign?

3. My two first steps have been as the preparatory to my Answer, like the Porch to the main Building; my third step will bring you into the House it self, which I shall endeavour to present to you as perfectly and perspicuously as I can. In this will consist the strength, the beauty of the Answer: If I be able to set it forth in its proper strength and beauty, I am sensible how far I am below this; I therefore intreat those that read or hear this Discourse, for their own sakes, and the Truths sake, to assist my weakness with the utmost strength of their candor, attention and understanding.

Dionysius the Areopagite saith in one place, That God reduceth into order those things which are out of order, and so establisheth all in good and beauty. There are two Rules and Maxims concerning Harmony and Order.

1. The Order and Harmony is there perfect, where the Variety is full. Contrariety is an eminent part of the Variety, which enlargeth the Variety, and heightens the Harmony. Contraria juxt à se posita magis elucescunt, Contraries illustrate and heighten one another.

2. The Order or Harmony is there most compleat, where the Unity is preserved most entire and conspicuous, in the fullest Variety. To this it is necessary, that there be no where any leap or gap. This makes the Beauty, this makes the Musick, to which all Spirits sensual and Intellectual on Earth, or in Heaven, spring and dance with sweetest and liveliest motions of delight and wonder, when the Unity unfolds it self into its amplest Variety by just degrees, even numbers, and exact proportions: When one extream passeth not to another, but through all the middle terms that stand between these extreams. When one passeth not to three, but by two. Now the Unity is preserved, the middle term being as the band, or the connexion of the two extreams which joyneth them in one. Now the Variety lies in the explication of the Unity, as it lies complicated in the Unity, when as the Ternary by being first gathered up into a duality, lieth folded up in the bosom of the Unity; so the Unity from the bosom of the duality, unfoldeth it self into the Ternary number. As in the blessed Trinity, the Father shines forth in the p. 159Person of the Son, his Beauty, and beautiful Object. Both these breathe forth themselves into the Spirit, the mutual Love, the Marriage-Bed of these two.

When thus the Varieties and Distinctions of things proceed by even and just degrees, springing up naturally and immediately out of the bosom of each other, as they lie naturally and nakedly in the bosom of each other, according to their Divine Love-sport and play in the Palace of their Father, the supream Unity; now the Unity shines and triumphs with a full Joy and Glory in the Face of the whole, and of each part. Now it flies, singing and sporting it self, upon the golden wings of a most ravishing Harmony over all. According to these two Rules, I shall proceed in my Answer, upon which it rests as upon its two Pillars, Jakin and Boaz, Establishment and Strength.

God is the God of Order, saith St. Paul. Order is the sacred Harmony of the Divine Nature; the Divine Nature, the Divine Beauty, the Divine Musick, all in one; first, in their Architype, then figuring themselves upon the whole Work of God; sweetly flowing through it all, shining, smiling, and playing every where upon the face of it. This Order with a Divine skill, by just degrees, and harmonious proportions, slides into its contrary, which is disorder, by which it sets off, and heightens it self, making the Variety more full.

The first, the highest disorder, the fountain of all disorder is Sin. This is the disorder of Intellectual Spirits, the chief of all the Works of God, the Head, the Guide, the measure of all the rest. All the other Creatures are to these, as light cast forth from the body of the Sun, which is the Sun's shadow, or as shadows in this life, the shadows of this shadow. St. Jude expresseth the Sin of Angels by their disorder, The Angels which kept not their first state, but left their own Habitation. State is in Greek Principle; they kept not their first Principle, the supream Unity; They held not the Head, as St. Paul expresseth it. They left their proper Habitation, the Divine Image, the Divine Order and Harmony, their proper place in that Harmony, where they were divinely-beautiful, and made an heavenly melody in the heavenly Consort and Quire. The Psalmist saith of man and his sin, Man being in honour continued not, but became like the Beast that perisheth. Honour is the delicate gloss, or sparkling lustre of a true Beauty, especially the beauty of Spirits, delightfully shining forth, and reflecting it self upon all Spirits round about it. The Divine Order and Harmony alone is the true beauty every where. This is immortal.

Thus man by sin breaks himself off from, and so becomes like the Beast, without any sense of, or sensible subordination to the Order and Harmony of the whole. While he cuts himself off from this, he dies, his disorder is his death, the true life of man vanishing, together with the Universal and Divine Harmony.

Every contrary supposeth or constituteth its Correlate contrary: the contrary to disorder is order. That then which the Scripture speaking with the tongue of a man, gives the name of Displeasure, Anger, Wrath in God is no other than love it self, in its naked and golden p. 160smiles; the Divine Beauty in the purity and simplicity of its most native and unchangeable sweetness; the Harmony of the Divine Nature, as a Glory eternal, calm, and Sun-shine, opposing themselves to the discord, deformity, enmity of Sin. As they say ill natures are tormented by Musick, as the evil Spirit in Saul was cast out by David's Harp: So is anger in God, the most delicious, the most transporting melody, sounding through the whole nature of things, from Jesus Christ, the Universal Image of the Divine Nature, and the golden Harp of God, which either charms the Spirit of disorder, or torments it.

Contrariorum remedium est contrarium, One contrariety is the cure and remedy of another. Disorder is reduced into order by the Divine Harmony, setting it self in an opposition and contrariety to it. While the opposition between these contraries remains, they heighten one another. This state of opposition is in the Divine Poem, or Work, as the scene of storms and tempests of Blood, Confusion, of the blackness of Darkness, of Death and Hell. This scene coming in, as a part of the Variety, sets off with a greater heightning, even to an extasy of wonder and delight, the Sweetnesses, the Beauties, the Glories of the Divine Harmony surrounding it, springing up, shining forth with a golden calm and lustre in the midst of it.

St. Paul divinely represents this to us, Rom. 5. ult. The Law came in, that Sin might abound; that where Sin abounded, Grace did superabound. That as Sin had reigned unto Death, so Grace might reign through Righteousness unto eternal Life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The Law which is the contrariety or opposition between the Harmony of Divine Love, and the disorder, the confusion of Lust (foreign) came in by the by, or by the way, in the course or stream of the heavenly Harmony, of the general and grand contrivance of Divine Love, to set it off and heighten it, to raise and transcend all expectations, to extend and surprise all Understandings, to make the melody of the whole more full, by the Variety, and more gloriously triumphant by the Discords.

The evils of Sufferings, according to the Law of the Divine Harmony, which is the Image of the Divine Wisdom, the first Beauty of Truth, the Image of the Divine Will, the first love and goodness in the Creature, have their entrance three ways.

1. Every Principle unfolds it self into all the powers and forms contained in it; so the evil of Sin, which is the root of Disorder, springeth up into all manner of disorders, through Spirit, Soul and Body, into all manner of evils, of blame, shame, pain, sorrow, torment. Lust when it conceiveth bringeth forth Sin, Sin when it is perfect bringeth forth death. All Disorders, all Evils, all Sufferings, are steps and forms of death.

2. The disorder of Sin, as it is the contrariety in the Harmony, is reduced into order, and made harmonious in the whole, by the opposition and contrariety of the Harmony, as in Musick, the setting the Concord by the Discord, makes the Melody. Now as p. 161the Harmony is all good, of Grace, Joy and Glory, every good, in every kind, being a particular Harmony, in the universal Harmony; so where the Universal Order, the Spirit of Order, which is the Spirit of Christ and God, setteth it self in a Contrariety to any disorderly Spirit; there all good of every kind is withdrawn, all evil, as of loss, so of pain ariseth. God saith in Deuteronomy, If you walk contrary unto me, I also will walk contrary unto you. Then all Plagues are reckoned up, the natural consequencies of this Contrariety. Then saith he several times over, If you go on to walk contrary to me, I will yet bring seven times more Plagues upon you. As the opposition, and disorder, and sin encreaseth, so the Divine Harmony also is heightned in its contrariety to it. All this is done, that the evil of sin and disorder, the beauty and sweetness of the Divine Grace and Order, may set out the Contrariety. This also is, that the distinction between the Ceator and the Creature, the heavenly Image, the Original and Substance which is all pure Light and Good, without any mixture of Darkness, or capacity of Evil. And the earthly Image, the shadow, which is composed of a figure of Light and true Darkness, from which sin, with all evils, spring and take life, according to the Language of the Apostle, may be more clearly discovered. Thus by the breaking in of sin, by blame and shame, and sufferings, which are as so many Glasses to set before sin the deformity and ugliness of its own face; the Creature, the shadowy Image is humbled, is broken to pieces, is brought into the dust, that it may give all glory, and attribute all good to the Creator, the Original, and eternal Image, that it may resign it self to it, seek its rest alone in it, and that it may finally return into the bosom of the Original Glory, which in these wayes, by these degrees, through the breakings of it, springeth up in it, breaketh forth through it, and bringeth it back again to lie down eternally in that Bosom of purest Love and Light, where it was at first from eternity, where it hath been eternally hid with Christ in God. All this God doth, that he may eternally display the unsearchable Riches of that Variety and Fulness which is in himself, that he may swallow up the Understanding of every Creature, Man or Angel, into an admiration and adoration of the incomprehensibleness of his Wayes, his Wisdom, his Blessedness and Glory, who at once bringeth forth these Varieties (which like Morning-Stars and Sons of God in the purest unmixt Light and Love, dance and sing together in his Bosom) into such fighting Contrarieties, upon the stage of the earthly and created Image here below, making that the seat of deformity, shame, woe and death, while it figureth out the highest Joys and Glories of eternal Life above, who again gathers up all these jarring and tumultuous Contrarieties into the first state and supream Unity, where the Variety is far more vast and boundless in the whole, far more full and distinct in each branch of it, where the whole is all, an eternal Melody, an eternal Beauty, an eternal Joy, unexpressibly Divine, pure and ravishing, where each branch, in its own distinct Form, is a Beauty, a Melody, a Joy equally pure, perfect and ravishing with the whole, being crowned with the Unity p. 162and Eternity, which is the highest Unity. This St. Paul representeth to us clearly and fully in the person of each Saint, when he saith, Heights and Depths, things present, and things to come, this World, Life and Death, all things are yours, and you are Christs, and Christ is Gods. All things are Divine, distinct eternal Glories in the person of a Saint, as a Saint is taken up into the Glory of Christ, as Christ is in the Glory of God.

3. The evil of Sufferings is the proper way, in the Universal Order, by which the disorderly Spirit, with its disorders, returneth into order, to possess and enjoy in it self the Divine Beauty and Musick of the whole. Guilt is the Obligation upon each Spirit, from every Act of disorder, unto the Divine Justice, which is the Law of the Divine Harmony, seated originally in the Divine Nature from the opposing it self to the disorderly Spirit, and the reducing it by the opposition into order.

This is done three wayes,

1. By Expiation.

2. By Compensation.

3. By Abolition.

1. Expiation or atonement is the bringing in of something Sacred, Divine and Perfect. The Heathen in their Expiations generally made use of brimstone, which seemed to have something Sacred and Divine in it, as appears by the Greek name foreign, which signifieth both brimstone, and something Divine, perhaps the reason is its aptness to take fire, and its resemblance in its pure and fiery flame to the Coelestial Bodies.

2. Compensation is of like to like by an equality, this turneth the Discord into a Concord, and gathereth it up into the Unity.

3. The Abolition is the effacing and blotting out the disorder, bringing it forth now into order, where the deformity of the discord is swallowed up into an amiable and beautiful Harmony. This is the chief part of the expiation or atonement in which the Ancients to this end made use of a living stream or fire, as things Sacred and proper for purification. But this whole work is comprehended in the mystery of Christ, it is begun and finished in his Person alone literally or mystically.

1. Expiation. Jesus Christ, the eternal Spirit of the Divine Order and Harmony springs up in the midst of the disorder, and takes it all upon himself, by taking Flesh. This is the beginning of the Expiation, this is the truly sacred Divine and perfect thing, brought in to expiate the confusion and the abomination: This is the supream Unity, the supream Harmony, Love it self, the Prince of Peace and Harmony, the God of Order discovering himself, as a sacred and eternal Root at the bottom of the disorder, in whom that also stands after an orderly and harmonious manner, while he himself also is springing up through it. This is the beginning of the Expiation.

2. Compensation. This Jesus, which is Divine Love it self, appearing in the enmity, the Divine Harmony it self, in the disorder, p. 163seats himself, as the mark of the opposition and contrariety, by which the Divine Order, in the Spirit of Order, which is himself, sets it self against the Disorder, to subdue and reduce it; he receiveth himself into his own bosom and heart, all the invenomed arrows and fiery darts which the Justice and Wrath of God, that is Love it self, casteth forth in its highest opposition, and contrariety to the enmity.

This contrariety of the Divine Love to the enmity, which hath violated and slain this Love, in breaking the Harmony, is maintained by a War of Blood and Fire, till it come to its ut most height, till the contrariety of Love to the enmity be fully displayed and discharged, till the enmity and disorder, that work of the Devil, be subdued and destroyed, together with the dissolution of flesh it self. The earthly and shadowy Image, the seat and ground of sin and enmity, by the death of Jesus Christ, who hath taken our Sins and Nature upon himself, as the first root and ground of all.

O sweet and Divine Mystery! O musical Discord, and harmonious Contrariety! O peaceful and pleasant War! where the supream Love stands on both sides, where, as in a mysterious Love-sport, or a Divine Love-play, it fights with it self, suffering for it self, dying by it self, and so it self sinking by death into its own sweetest bosom and dearest embraces, the fountain of Life, the center and circle of all Delights: O bitter Peace! disordering Melody! broken and unpleasant Harmony! where Love suffers all evil, and is slain on both sides, to make perfect the Harmony. But oh full Compensation! O full and sweet Harmony, arising out of the Discords, swallowing up the Discords themselves into the most pure, the most perfect, most pleasant melody; whereas Love first suffered, and was slain by the disorder and enmity of Sin; so now Love again suffereth, and is slain for the enmity, for sin, by the wrath of God against sin, that is, by the Love in its contrary to the enmity. Thus Love it self, in the place of us all, most lovingly, and beauty it self, most beautifully is become a Sacrifice for it self to it self.

3. Abolition. The last step in the way of reducing disorder into order, is the Abolition or Renovation; this is the finishing of all in the Person of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is the compleat Image of the invisible God. Thus he comprehendeth the whole Creation in himself, for all the Creatures are so many expressive or manifestative figures of the Divine Glory. We read in Scripture, That the things which are seen; that is, all the created Objects of Sense or Reason, Humane or Angelical, stand up out of the things which are not seen. Jesus Christ then being the first, & highest Image of the invisible God, as he is in his own unaccessible Light, is the Root out of which, and in which the Creation stands; the Lord Jesus, as this universal Person, goes down into the Grave, and carries thither, into those lowest shades, at once with himself all Images of things, the Original and the Copy, the Substance and the Shadow, the Uncreated Glory and the created Figure. So Christ dies, and the whole Creation dieth with him, so he makes an end of Sin and Transgression. Here he p. 164sings that triumphant Song, O Death, I am thy death. Here all the evil of Sin and Suffering, of Disorder and Contrariety, which, as a grave, had swallowed up the whole Creation, is swallowed up into Victory in the grave of Christ.

In this Divine Death, the whole Creation is dissolved, and comes to its last end, in its last end it meets with its beginning, falling quite out of it self, falling down out of its own empty, obscure shade and nothingness, it falls into the bosom of its heavenly and eternal Mother, the Original Glory.

The Original Glory in the Person of Christ hath descended thus low, together with its Birth and shadow; Here it finisheth its descent in its shadow, here diffusing it self and its eternal Light through these shades of death, and through the whole Creation, in these shades it maketh it self perfectly one, by an entire and mutual communion in death with all the Creatures, whose life was a continual War with it. The Light of the heavenly Image poured forth in these shades of death, flowing through the created Image, overflowing and taking it into it self, is that precious and Divine Blood, which by its mysterious washings maketh the crimson and scarlet sins or stains upon this Image whiter than the whitest wooll or snow.

In this Divine Death, the shadowy Image, with all its evils of disorder and enmity, are now past away for ever, in respect to any reality, substantiality, or subsistence in themselves; they remain only as figures, in the Divine shade of this death, in which shade the heavenly Image bears all in its pure, although obscured bosom. It is now the Root of eternal Love, and eternal Life in Death, receiving into it self all the Creatures, with all their disorders and enmities. They all now do here put off their Realities, and become only mysterious shadows, through which the supream Beauty and Sweetness springeth and sporteth it self. But the Original Glory, in the Person of Christ, having now finished the mystery of its descent in the Creature, and in this final dissolution taken the Creature again into it self as its first and proper Root, beginneth now its return and ascent. As the Lord Jesus died, so he riseth again an universal Person, with both Images, created and uncreated, united in himself.

The eternal Glory, once in the first Creation, vailed it self beneath a shadowy Image, to die in that Image; accordingly he died with it, and for it. But now he riseth again, in the brightness of his heavenly Image, he raiseth the whole Creation together with himself, as his proper and immediate Birth, as its purest and loveliest Bride, in the most intimate, entire, and mutual Union with it self, in all its glories, thus to live for ever in the richest and closest embraces of each other.