ruin, we are generally as well qualified before we can speak plain, as all our life-time after. Children can say over their religion at four or five years old, and their parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty. The common Creed of the Christian religion may be learned in an hour: and one days philosophy will teach a man to die. But to know the virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ, is a science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever. "But if man may be thus changed without death, and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life; what then is Death? Or, whereunto serveth it? What is it? Why 'tis a misfortune fallen upon man from the beginning, and from which he has not yet dared to attempt his recovery: and it serves as a Spectre to fright us into a little better life (perhaps) than we should lead without it. Though God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life, Men have made an agreement with Death and Hell, by way of composition to submit to Death, in hope of escaping Hell by that obedience ; and under this allegiance we think ourselves bound never to rebel against it! The study of Philosophy is to teach men to die, from the observations of Nature; the profession of Divinity is to enforce the doctrine from Revelation: and the science of the Law is to settle our civil affairs pursuant to these resolutions. The old men are making their last Wills and Testaments; and the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the testators; and thus Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis. I was under this Law of Death once; and while I lay under it, I felt the terror of it, till I had delivered myself from it by those thoughts which must convince them that have them. And in this thing only, I wish, for their sakes, that all men were as I am. The reason why I believe that this doctrine is true, is, because God hath said it: yet I could not thus assert it by argument, if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any maxims or positions in human science. The Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of itself and a science of itself, which can never be known by the study of any other science. It is a science out of Man's way, being a pure invention of God. Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself; but to raise his ambition for learning this, God graduates him upon his degree of knowledge in it, and gives him badges of honour as belonging to that degree, upon the attainment whereof a man gains the title of a Child of the Resurrection: to which title belongs this badge of honour, to die no more but make our exit by translation, as Christ, who was the first of this Order, did before us. And this world being the academy to educate Man for Heaven, none shall ever enter there till they have taken this degree here. "Let the Dead bury the Dead! and the Dead lie with the Dead! And the rest of the Living go lie with them! I'll follow him that was dead, and is alive, and living for ever. And though I am now single, yet I believe that this belief will be general before the general change, of which Paul speaks, shall come; and that then, and not before, shall be the Resurrection of the Just, which is called the first Resurrection; and after that the Dead so arisen, with the Living, then alive, shall have learned this faith, which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the air, then shall be the General Resurrection, after which Time shall be no more. "The beginning of this faith, like all other parts of the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a grain of mustard seed, spreading itself by degrees till it overshadow the whole earth. And since the things concerning Him must have an end,' in order to this they must have a beginning. But whoever leads the van will make the world start, and must expect for himself to walk up and down, like Cain, with a mark on his forehead, and run the gauntlet for an Ishmaelite, having every man's hand against him because his hand is against every man; than which nothing is more averse to my temper. This makes me think of publishing with as much regret as he that ran way from his errand when sent to Niniveh: but being just going to cross the water-(he was going to Ireland, -) I dared not leave this behind me undone, lest a Tempest send me back again to do it. And to shelter myself a little, (though I knew my speech would betray me) I left the Title page anonymous. Nor do I think that any thing would now extort my name from me but the dread of the sentence, he that is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will I be ashamed before my Father and his Angels:' for fear of which I dare not but subscribe my argument, though with a trembling hand; having felt two powers within me all the while I have been about it, one bids me write, and the other bobs my elbow. But since I have wrote this, as Pilate did his inscription, without consulting any one, I'll be absolute as he was; ' what I have written, I have written.' |