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Even among apostates from Christianity most, or many, still acknowledge the soul's immortality, and the felicity and reward of holy souls, to be of the common notices, known by nature to mankind. Julian was so much persuaded of it, that on that account he exhorts his priests and subjects to great strictness and holiness of life, and to see that the Christians did not exceed them. Among us, many that seem not to believe our supernatural revelations of Christianity, do fully acknowledge it. As also those philosophers who most opposed Christianity, as Porphyrius, Maximus Tyrius, and such others.

The major is past doubt. Good and felicity being necessarily desired by the will of man, that which is best and known so to be, must be most desired.

The minor should be as far past doubt to men that use not their sense against their reason. In this life there is nothing certain to be continued one hour. It is certain that all will quickly end : and that the longest life is short. It is certain that time and pleasure past are nothing, properly nothing; and so no better to us than if they had never been. It is certain that while we possess them, they are poor unsatisfactory things, the pleasure of the flesh being no sweeter to a man than to a beast; and the trouble that accompanies it much more. Beasts have not the cares, fears, and sorrows upon foresight which man bath: they fear not death upon the fore-knowledge of it, nor fear any misery after death, nor are put upon any labour, sufferings or trials, to obtain a future happiness, or avoid a future mis

We find that this notice hath so deep a root in nature, that few of those that study and labour themselves into sensuality or sadducism, are able to silence the fears of future misery, but conscience overcomes or troubles them much at least, when they have done the worst they can against it. Whence should all this be in man and not in beasts, if man had no further reason of hopes and fears, than they? Are a few sad-ery: all which considered, he speaks not by readucees wiser by their forced or crude conceits, than all the world that are taught by nature itself.

If the God of nature have made it every man's certain duty to make it his chief care and work in this life, to seek for happiness hereafter, then such a happiness there is for them that truly seek it. But the antecedent is certain, as I have elsewhere proved.

As to the antecedent, the world is made up of three sorts of men, as to the belief of future retribution. Such as take it for a certain truth-Christians, Mahometans, and most heathens; such as take it for uncertain, but most probable or most likely to be true; such as take it for uncertain, but rather think it untrue. For as none can be certain that it is false, which indeed is true, so I never yet met with one that would say he was certain it was false, So that I need not trouble you with the mention of any other party or opinion. But if any should say so, it is easy to prove that he speaks falsely of himself.

That it is the duty of all these, but especially of the two former sorts, to make it their chief care and work to seek their happiness in the life to come, is easily proved thus: Natural reason requires every man to seek that which is best for himself, with the greatest diligence; but natural reason saith that a probability or possibility of the future, everlasting happiness is better and more worthy to be sought, than any thing attainable in tais present life, which doth not suppose it.

son, who saith this vain, vexatious life is better than the possibility or probability of the everlasting glory.

never

Now as to the consequence, or major, of the first argument, it is evident of itself, from God's perfection, and the nature of his works. God makes it not man's natural duty to lay out his chief care and labour of all his life on that which is not, or to seek that which man was made to attain: for then all his duty should result from mere deceit and falsehood, and God should govern all the world by a lie, which cannot be his part who wants neither power, wisdom, nor love, to rule them by truth and righteousness; and who hath printed his image both on his laws and on his servants; in which laws lying is condemned: and the better any man is, the more he hates it; and liars are lothed by all mankind. Then the better any man is, and the more he doth his duty, the more deluded, erroneous and miserable should he be. For he should spend that care and labour of his life upon deceit, for that which he shall never have, and so He should should lose his time and labour. deny his flesh those temporal pleasures which bad men take and suffer persecutions and injuries from the wicked, and all for nothing, and on mistake: the more wicked or more unbelieving any man is, the wiser and happier should he be, as being in the right when he denies the life to come, and all duty and labour in seeking it, or in avoiding future punishment; and while he takes his utmost pleasure here, he bath all that man was made for. But all this is

utterly unsuitable to God's perfection, and to his other works: for he makes nothing in vain, nor can he lie; much less will he make holiness itself, and all that duty and work of life which reason itself obliges all men to, to be not only vain, but hurtful to them. But of this argument I have enlarged elsewhere.

Man differs so much from brutes in the knowledge of God, and of his future possibilities, that it proves that he differs as much in his capacity and certain hopes. As to the antecedent, man knows that there is a God by his works: he knows that this God is our absolute Lord, our ruler, and our end: he knows that naturally we owe him all our love and obedience: he knows that good men use not to let their most faithful servants be losers by their fidelity, nor do they use to set them to labour in vain; he knows that man's soul is immortal, or at least that it is far more probable that it is so; and therefore that it must accordingly be well or ill for ever; and that this should be most cared for. Why should God give him all this knowledge more than to the brutes, if he were made for no more enjoyment than the brutes, of what he knows: every wise man makes his work fit for the use that he intends it to, and will not God? So that the consequence also is proved from the divine perfection; and if God were not perfect, he were not God the denial of a God therefore, is the result of the denial of man's future hopes.

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Indeed, though it be but an analogical reason that brutes have, those men seem to be in the right, who place the difference between man and brutes, more in the objects, tendency, and work of our reason, than in our reason itself as such, and so make animal religiosum to be more of his description than animal rationale. About their own low concerns, a fox, a dog, yea, an ass and a goose, have such actions as we know not well how to ascribe to any thing below some kind of reasoning, or a perception of the same importance. But they think not of God, and his goverment and laws, nor of obeying, trusting or loving him, nor of the hopes or fears of another life, or of the joyful prospect of it: these are that work that man was made for, which is the chief difference from the brutes. Shall we unman ourselves?

The justice of God, as governor of the world, infers different rewards hereafter, as I have largely elsewhere proved. God is not only a mover of all that moves, but a moral ruler of man by laws, judgment, and executions. Else there were no proper law of nature, which few are so unnatural as to deny and man should

have no proper duty, but only motion, as he is moved; and then how comes a government by laws to be set up under God by men? Then there were no sin or fault in any; for if there were no law and duty, but only necessitated motion, all would be moved as the mover pleased, and there could be no sin; and then there would be no moral good, but forced or necessary motion: but all this is most absurd: and experience tells us that God doth indeed morally govern the world; and his right is unquestionable.

If God were not the ruler of the world, by law and judgment, the world would have no universal laws; for there is no man that is the universal ruler. Then kings, and other supreme powers, would be utterly lawless and ungoverned, as having none above them to give them laws, and so they would be capable of no sin or faultand of no punishment; which yet neither their subjects' interest, nor their own consciences, will grant or allow them thoroughly to believe.

If God be a ruler, he is just; or else he were not perfect, nor so good, as he requires princes and judges on earth to be. An unjust ruler or judge is abominable to all mankind. Righteousness is the great attribute of the universal king.

But how were he a righteous ruler, if he drew all men to obey him by deceit ? If he obliged them to seek and expect a felicity or reward which he will never give them? If he make man's duty his misery; if he require him to labour in vain; if he suffer the wicked to prosecute his servants to the death, and make duty costly, and give no after recompence; or if he let the most wicked on the earth pass unpunished, or to escape as well hereafter as the best, and to live in greater pleasure here? The objections brought from the intrinsical good of duty, I have elsewhere answered.

But God hath not left us to the light of mere nature, as being too dark for men so blind as we: the gospel revelation is the clear foundation of our faith and hopes. Christ hath brought life and immortality to light: one from heaven that is greater than an angel was sent to tell us what is there, and which is the way to secure our hopes. He hath risen and conquered death, and entered before us as our captain and fore-runner into the everlasting habitations. He hath all power in heaven and earth, and all judgment is committed to him, that he might give eternal life to his elect: he hath frequently and expressly promised it them, that they shall live because he lives, and shall not perish, but have everlasting life. How fully he hath proved and sealed the truth of his word and office to us, I

have so largely opened in my Reasons of the Christian Religion, and Unreasonableness of Infidelity, and in my Life of Faith, &c. and since in my Household Catechising, that I will not here repeat it.

thereby assures his servants that he is their true and faithful Saviour. We are apt in our distress to cry aloud for mercy and deliverances; and when human help fails, to promise God, that if he now will save us, we will thankfully acknowledge it his work; and yet when we are delivered, to return not only to security, but to ingratitude: and think that our deliverance came but in the course of common providence, and not indeed as an answer to our prayers. Therefore God in mercy renews both our distresses, and our deliverances, that what once or twice will not convince us of, many and great deliverances may. This is my own case. O! how often have I cried to him when men and means were nothing, and when no help in second causes did appear, and how often, suddenly, and mercifully hath he delivered me? What sudden ease, what removal of long afflictions have I had; such extraordinary changes, and beyond my own and others' expectations, when many plain-hearted, upright Christians have by fasting and prayer sought God on my behalf, as have over and over convinced me of special providence, and that God is indeed a hearer of prayer. Wonders I have seen done for others also, upon such prayers, more than for myself: yea, and wonders for the church and public societies. Though I and others are too like those Israelites who cried to God in their troubles, and he often delivered them out of their distress, but they quickly forgot his mercies, and their convictions, purposes, and promises, when they should have praised the Lord for his goodness, and declared his works with thanksgiving to the sons of men.

As all his word is full of promises of our future glory at the resurrection, so we are not without assurance that at death the departing soul doth enter upon a state of joy and blessedness. He expressly promised the penitent crucified thief, 'this day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' He gave us the narrative or parable of the condemned sensualist, and of Lazarus, to instruct us, and not to deceive us. He tells the sadducees that God is not the God of the dead, as his subjects and beneficiaries, but of the living. Enoch and Elias were taken up to heaven, and Moses, who died, appeared with Elias on the mount. He tells us, that they that kill the body, are not able to kill the soul.* Christ's own soul was commended into his Father's hands, and was in paradise, when his body was in the grave, to show us what shall become of ours. He hath promised, that where he is, there shall his servant be also.' That the life here begun in us is eternal life, and that he that believes in him shall not die, but shall live by him, as he lives by the Father; for he dwells in God, and God in him, and in Christ, and Christ in him. Accordingly Stephen that saw heaven opened, prayed the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit. We are come to mount Sion, &c. to an innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits of the just made perfect. Paul desired to depart and be with Christ as far better: 'to be absent from the body, and be present with the Lord.' The dead that die in the Lord are blessed, from henceforth, that they may rest from their labours, and their works follow them.' If the disobedient spirits be in prison, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah suffer the vengeance of eternal fire, then the just I know that no promise of hearing prayer sets have eternal life. If the Jews had not thought up our wills in absoluteness, or above God's, as the soul immortal, Saul had not desired the witch if every will of ours must be fulfilled if we do to call up Samuel to speak with him: the rest I but put it into a fervent or confident prayer: now pass by. We have many great and precious but if we ask any thing through Christ, accordpromises on which a departed soul may trusting to his will, expressed in his promise, he will Christ expressly says, that when we fail, that is, must leave this world, we shall be received into the everlasting habitations.

It is not nothing to encourage us to hope in him that hath made all these promises, when we find how he hears prayers in this life, and

* Indeed if the soul were not immortal, the resurrection were impossible: it might be a new creation of another soul, but not a resurrection of the same, if the same be annihilated. It is certain that the Jews believed the immortality of the soul, in that they believed

the resurrection and future life of the same man.

What were all these answers and mercies but the fruits of Christ's power, fidelity, and love, the fulfilling of his promises, and the earnest of the greater blessings of immortality, which the same promises give me title to.

hear us. If a sinful love of this present life, or of ease, wealth, or honour, should cause me to pray to God against death, or against all sickness, want, reproach, or other trials, as if I must live here in prosperity for ever if I ask it; this sinful desire and expectation is not the work of faith, but of presumption: What if God will not abate me my last, or daily pains? What if he will continue my life no longer, whoever pray for it, and how earnestly soever? Shall I there

fore forget how often he hath heard prayers for me; and how wonderfully he hath helped both me and others? My faith hath often been helped by such experiences, and shall I forget them, or question them, without cause at last?

That the change is of grand importance unto man, appears in that it is the renovation of his mind, will, and life: it repairs his depraved faculties: it causes man to live as man, who is degenerated to a life too like to brutes: by God's permitting many to live in blindness, wickedness, and confusion, and to be tormentors of themselves and one another, by temptations, injuries, wars, and cruelty, we the more fully see what it is that grace doth save men from, and what a difference it makes in the world. Those that have lived unholily in their youth, easily find the difference in themselves when they are renewed: but to them that have been piously in

It is a subordinate help to my belief of immortality with Christ, to find so much evidence that angels have friendly communion with us here, and therefore we shall have communion with them hereafter. They have charge of us, and pitch their tents about us; they bear us up; they rejoice at our repentance, they are the regardful witnesses of our behaviour: they are ministering spirits for our good; they are our angels, beholding the face of our heavenly Father.clined from their childhood, it is harder to discern They will come with Christ in glorious attendance at the great and joyful day: and as his executioners, they will separate the just from the unjust.

It is not only the testimony of scripture, by which we know their communion with us, but also some degree of experience: not only of old did they appear to the faithful as messengers, from God, but of late times there have been testimonies of their ministration for us: of which see Zanchy, On Angels, and Mr J. Ambrose, On our Communion with Angels. Many a mercy doth God give us by their ministry: and they that are now so friendly to us, and suitable to our communion and help, and make up one society with us, do hereby greatly encourage us to hope that we are made for the same religion, work and company, with these our blessed, loving friends. They were once in a life of trial, as we are now, though not on earth. They that overcame and are confirmed, rejoice in our victory and confirmation. It is not an uninhabited world which is above us; nor such as is beyond our capacity and hope we are come to an innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits of the perfected just.

But the great and sure prognostics of our immortal happiness, is from the renewing operations of the Spirit of holiness on the soul. That such a renewing work there is, all true believers in some measure feel; and that it is the earnest of heaven is proved thus.

If it be a change of greatest benefit to man; if heaven be the very sum and end of it; if it overcome all fleshly, worldly opposition; if it can be wrought by none but God; if it was before promised by Jesus Christ to all sound believers, and is universally wrought in them all, either only, or eminently above all others; and was promised them as a pledge and earnest of glory; then it can be no less than such a pledge and earnest. But the former are all true, &c.

the difference, unless they mark the case of others. If man be worth any thing, it is for the use that his faculties were made: and if he be not good for the knowledge, love, and service of his Creator, what is he good for? Certainly the generality of ungodly worldlings are indisposed to all such works as this, till the Spirit of Christ effectually change them. Men are slaves to sin till Christ thus make them free. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' If the divine nature and image, and the love of God shed abroad on the heart, be not our excellency, health, and beauty, what is? And that which is born of the flesh, is flesh; but that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit.' Without Christ and his Spirit, we can do nothing: our dead notions and reason, when we see the truth, have not power to overcome temptations, nor to raise up man's soul to its original and end, nor to possess us with the love and joyful hopes of fu ture blessedness. It were better for us to have no souls, than that those souls should be void of the Spirit of God.

That heaven is the sum and end of all the Spirit's operations, appears in all that are truly conscious of them in themselves; and to them and others by all God's precepts, which the Spirit causes us to obey, and the doctrine which it causes us to believe, and by the description of all God's graces which he works in us. What is our knowledge and faith, but our knowledge and belief of heaven, as consisting in the glory and love of God there manifested, and as purchased by Christ, and given by his covenant? What is our hope, but the hope of glory? And through the Spirit we wait for all this hope.' What is our love but a desire of communion with the blessed God here, and perfectly hereafter? As the sum of Christ's gospel was 'take up the cross, forsake all here, and follow me, and thou shalt have a reward in heaven.' The consolation of his gos

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rel is, 'rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.' So the same is the sum of his Spirit's operations: for what he teaches and commands that he works, for he works by that word; and the impress must be like the signet, what arm soever set it on. He sends not his Spirit to make men more crafty than others for this world; but to make them wiser for salvation: and to make them more heavenly and holy for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.' Heavenliness is the Spirit's special work.

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and design be the less discerned and honoured in the world, because their chief difference is out of the sight of man, in the heart, and in their secret actions, and because their imperfections blemish them, and because the malignant world is by strangeness and enmity an incompetent judge, yet it is discernable to others, that they live upon the hopes of a better life, and that their heavenly interest overrules all the adverse interests of this world, and that in order thereunto they live under the conduct of divine authority, and that God's will is highest and most prevalent with them, and that to obey and

In working this it conquers the inward averse- | please him as far as they know it, is the greatest ness of a fleshly, worldly mind and will, and the business of their lives, though ignorance and adcustoms of a carnal life; and the outward temp- verse flesh make their holiness and obedience tations of Satan, and all the allurements of the imperfect. The universal noise and opposition world. Christ first overcame the world, and of the world against them, show that men disteaches and causes us to overcome it; even its cern a very great difference, which error, and flatteries and its frowns: our faith is our victory: cross interests, and carnal inclinations, render whether this victory be easy, and any hon-displeasing to those who find them condemned our to the Spirit of Christ, let our experience by their heavenly designs and conversations. of the wickedness of the ungodly world, and of our own weakness, and of our falls, when the Spirit of God forsakes us, be our informer.

But whether others discern it, or deny it, or detest it, the true believer is conscious of it in himself: even when he groans to be better, to believe, trust, and love God more, and to have more of the heavenly life and comforts, those very desires signify another appetite and mind, than worldlings have; and even when his frailties and weaknesses make him doubt of his own

or hopes, for all that the world can offer him. He hath the witness in himself, that there is in

That none but God can do this work on the soul of man, both the knowledge of causes and experience prove. The most learned, wise, and holy teachers cannot, as they confess and show; the wisest and most loving parents cannot; and therefore must pray to him that can: the great-sincerity, he would not change his governor, rule, est princes cannot evil angels neither can nor will. What good angels can do on the heart we know not; but we know that they do no-believers a sanctifying Spirit, calling up their thing, but as the obedient ministers of God. Though we have some power on ourselves, yet that we ourselves cannot do it; that we cannot quicken, illuminate, or sanctify ourselves, and that we have nothing but what we have received, conscience and experience fully tell us.

That Christ promised this Spirit in a special measure, to all true believers, that it should be in them his advocate, agent, seal, and mark, is yet visible in the gospel; yea, and in the former prophets. Indeed the Spirit here, and heaven hereafter, are the chief of all the promises of Christ.

That this Spirit is given, not to hypocrites that abuse Christ, and do not seriously believe him, nor to mere pretending nominal Christians, but to all that sincerely believe the gospel, is evident not only to themselves in certainty, if they are in a condition to know themselves, but to others in part, by the effects: they have other ends, other affections, other lives, than the rest of mankind have; though their heavenly nature

minds to God and glory, and warring victoriously against the flesh; so that to will is present with them; and they love and delight in a holy conformity to their rule, and it is never so well and pleasant with them, as when they can trust and love God most; and in their worst and weakest condition, they would wish to be perfect. This spirit, and its renewing work, so greatly different from the temper and desires of worldly men, is given by Christ to all sound believers.

It is true, that some that know not of an incarnate Saviour, have much in them that is very laudable. Whether it be real saving holiness, and whether Abraham were erroneous in thinking that even the Sodoms of the world were likely to have had fifty righteous persons in them, I am not now to inquire: but it is sure that the world had really a Saviour, about four thousand years before Christ's incarnation, even the God of pardoning mercy, who promised and undertook what after was performed, and shall be to the end. The Spirit

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