To all that Doubt, or Disbelieve
The Truths of the Gospel,
WHETHER
They be DEISTS, ARIANS, SOCINIANS,
Or Nominal Christians.
IN WHICH
The true Grounds and Reasons of the whole
Christian FAITH and LIFE are plainly and
fully demonstrated
By WILLIAM LAW, M.A.
To which are added, Some Animadversions upon Dr. Trapp's Late Reply.
LONDON:
Printed for W. INNYS and J. RICHARDSON, in Pater Noster Row. 1740.
An ADVERTISEMENT to the READER.
I Have Nothing to say by way of Preface or Introduction. I only ask this Favor
of the Reader, that he would not pass any Censure upon this Book, from only
dipping into this, or that particular Part of it, but give it one fair Perusal
in the Order it is written, and then I shall have neither Right, nor
Inclination to complain of any Judgment he shall think fit to pass upon it.
Of Creation in general. Of the Origin of the Soul. Whence Will and Thought
are in the Creature. Why the Will is free. The Origin of Evil solely from the
Creature. This World not a first, immediate Creation of God. How the World
comes to be in its present State. The first Perfection of Man. All Things
prove a Trinity in God. Man hath the triune Nature of God in Him. Arianism
and Deism confuted by Nature. That Life is uniform through all Creatures. That
there is but one kind of Death to be found in all Nature. The fallen Soul hath
the Nature of Hell in it. Regeneration is a real Birth of a Divine Life in the
Soul. That there is but one Salvation possible in Nature. This Salvation only
to be had from Jesus Christ. All the Deist's Faith and Hope proved to be
false.
[App-1-1] It has been an opinion commonly received, though without any
foundation in the light of nature, or scripture, that God created this whole
visible world, and all things in it, out of nothing. Nay, that the souls of
men, and the highest orders of beings, were created in the same manner. The
scripture is very decisive against this original of the souls of men. For
Moses saith, "God breathed into man (Spiraculum Vitarum) the breath of lives,
and man became a living soul." Here the notion of a soul created out of
nothing, is in the plainest, strongest manner rejected, by the first written
Word of God; and no Jew or Christian can have the least excuse for falling into
such an error; here the highest and most divine original is not darkly, but
openly, absolutely, and in the strongest form of expression ascribed to the
soul; it came forth as a breath of life, or lives, out from the mouth of God,
and therefore did not come out of the womb of nothing, but is what it is, and
has what it has in itself, from, and out of the first and highest of all
beings.
[App-1-2] For to say that God breathed forth into man the breath of lives, by
which he became a living soul, is directly saying, that that which was life,
light, and Spirit in the living God, was breathed forth from him to become the
life, light and spirit of a creature. The soul therefore being declared to be
an effluence from God, a breath of God, must have the nature and likeness of
God in it, and is, and can be nothing else, but something, or so much of the
divine nature, become creaturely existing, or breathed forth from God, to stand
before him in the form of a creature.
[App-1-3] When the animals of this world were to be created, it was only said,
Let the earth, the air, the water bring forth creatures after their kinds; but
when man was to be brought forth, it was said, "Let us make man in our own
image and likeness." Is not this directly saying, Let man have his beginning
and being out of us, that he may be so related to us in his soul and spirit, as
the animals of this world are related to the elements from which they are
produced. Let him so come forth from us, be so breathed out of us, that our
triune, divine nature may be manifested in him, that he may stand before us as
a creaturely image, likeness, and representative of that which we are in
ourselves.
[App-1-4] Now, from this original doctrine of the creation of man, known to all
the first inhabitants of the world, and published in the front of the first
written Word of God; these great truths have been more or less declared to all
the nations of the world. First, that all mankind are the created offspring of
the one God. Secondly, that in all men there is a spirit or breath of lives,
that did not begin to be out of nothing, or was created out of nothing; but
came from the true God into man, as his own breath of life breathed into him.
Thirdly, that therefore there is in all men, wherever dispersed over the earth,
a divine, immortal, never-ending spirit, that can have nothing of death in it,
but must live for ever, because it is the breath of the everliving God.
Fourthly, that by this immortal breath, or Spirit of God in man, all mankind
stand in the same nearness of relation to God, are all equally his children,
are all under the same necessity of paying the same homage of love and
obedience to him, all fitted to receive the same blessing and happiness from
him, all created for the same eternal enjoyment of his love and presence with
them, all equally called to worship and adore him in spirit and truth, all
equally capable of seeking and finding him, of having a blessed union and
communion with him.
[App-1-5] These great truths, the first pillars of all true and spiritual
religion, on which the holy and divine lives of the ancient patriarchs was
supported, by which they worshipped God in a true and right faith; these
truths, I say, were most eminently and plainly declared in the express letter
of the Mosaic writings, here quoted. And no writer, whether Jewish or
Christian, has so plainly, so fully, so deeply laid open the true ground, and
necessity of an eternal, never- ceasing relation between God, and all the human
nature; no one has so incontestably asserted the immortality of the soul, or
spirit of man; or so deeply laid open, and proved the necessity of one
religion, common to all human nature, as the legislator of the Jewish theocracy
had done. Life and immortality are indeed justly said to be brought to light by
the gospel; not only because they there stand in a new degree of light, largely
explained, and much appealed to, and absolutely promised by the Son of God
himself, but chiefly because the precious means and mysteries of obtaining a
blessed life, and a blessed immortality, were only revealed, or brought to
light by the gospel.
[App-1-6] But the incontestable ground and reason of an immortal life, and
eternal relation between God, and the whole human nature, and which lays all
mankind under the same obligations to the same true worship of God, is most
fully set forth by Moses, who alone tells us the true fact; how, and why man is
immortal in his nature, viz., because the beginning of his life was a breath,
breathed into him from God; and for this end, that he might be a living image
and likeness of God, created to partake of the nature and immortality of God.
[App-1-7] This is the great doctrine of the Jewish legislator, and which justly
places him amongst the greatest preachers of true religion. St. Paul used a
very powerful argument to persuade the Athenians to own the true God, and the
true religion, when he told them, "that God made the world and all things
therein; that he giveth life and breath and all things; that he hath made of
one blood, all nations of men to dwell on the earth; that they should all seek
the Lord, if haply they might feel after, and find him, seeing he is not far
from any of us, because in him we live, move, and have our being." {Acts
xvii.24.} And yet this doctrine, which St. Paul preaches to the Athenians, is
nothing else, but that same divine and heavenly instruction, which he had
learnt from Moses, which Moses openly and plainly taught all the Jews. The
Jewish theocracy therefore was by no means an intimation to that people, that
they had no concern with the true God, but as children of this world, under his
temporal protection or punishment; for their lawgiver left them no room for
such a thought, because he had as plainly taught them their eternal nature and
eternal relation, which they had to God in common with all mankind; as St.
Paul did to the Athenians, who only set before them that very doctrine that
Moses taught all the Jews. The great end of the Jewish theocracy was to show,
both to Jew and gentile, the absolute, uncontrollable power of the one God, by
such a covenanted interposition of his providence, that all the world might
know, that the one God, from whom both Jew and gentile were fallen away, by
departing from the faith and religion of their first fathers, was the only God,
from whom all mankind could receive either blessing or cursing.
[App-1-8] This was the great thing intended to be proclaimed to all the world
by this theocracy, viz., that only the God of Israel had power to save or
destroy, to punish or reward, according to his pleasure; and that therefore all
the gods of the heathens, were mere vanity. If therefore any Jews, by reason
of those extraordinary temporal blessings and cursings which they received
under their theocracy, grew grossly ignorant, or dully senseless of their
eternal nature, and eternal relation to God, and of that one true religion,
which by nature they were obliged to observe in common with all mankind; if
they took God only to be their local or tutelary deity, and themselves to be
only animals of this world; such a grossness of belief was no more to be
charged upon their great lawgiver, Moses, than if they had believed, that a
golden calf was their true god. But to return to the creation.
[App-1-9] 2. It is the same impossibility for a thing to be created out of
nothing, as to be created by nothing. {See Spirit of Prayer, Part II, page 58,
&c. Way to Divine Knowledge, page 247, &c.} It is no more a part, or
prerogative of God's omnipotence to create a being out of nothing, than to make
a thing to be, without any one quality of being in it; or to make, that there
should be three, where there is neither two, nor one. Every creature is
nothing else, but nature put into a certain form of existence; and therefore a
creature not formed out of nature, is a contradiction. A circle, or a square
cannot be made out of nothing, nor could any power bring them into existence,
but because there is an extension in nature, that can be put into the form of a
circle, or a square: but if dead figures cannot by any power be made out of
nothing, who sees not the impossibility of making living creatures, angels, and
the souls of men out of nothing?
[App-1-10] 3. Thinking and willing are eternal, they never began to be.
Nothing can think, or will now, in which there was not will and thought from
all eternity. For it is as possible for thought in general to begin to be, as
for that which thinks in a particular creature to begin to be of a thinking
nature: therefore the soul, which is a thinking, willing being is come forth,
or created out of that which hath willed and thought in God, from all eternity.
The created soul is a creature of time, and had its beginning on the sixth day
of the creation; but the essences of the soul, which were then formed into a
creature, and into a state of distinction from God, had been in God from all
eternity, or they could not have been breathed forth from God into the form of
a living creature.
[App-1-11] And herein lies the true ground and depth of the uncontrollable
freedom of our will and thoughts: they must have a self- motion, and
self-direction, because they came out of the self-existent God. They are
eternal, divine powers, that never began to be, and therefore cannot begin to
be in subjection to any thing. That which thinks and wills in the soul, is
that very same unbeginning breath which thought and willed in God, before it
was breathed into the form of an human soul; and therefore it is, that will and
thought cannot be bounded or constrained.
[App-1-12] Herein also appears the high dignity, and never-ceasing perpetuity
of our nature. The essences of our souls can never cease to be, because they
never began to be: and nothing can live eternally, but that which hath lived
from all eternity. The essences of our soul were a breath in God before they
became a living soul, they lived in God before they lived in the created soul,
and therefore the soul is a partaker of the eternity of God, and can never
cease to be. Here, O man, behold the great original, and the high state of thy
birth; here let all that is within thee praise thy God, who has brought thee
into so high a state of being, who has given thee powers as eternal and
boundless as his own attributes, that there might be no end or limits of thy
happiness in him. Thou begannest as time began, but as time was in eternity
before it became days and years, so thou wast in God before thou wast brought
into the creation: and as time is neither a part of eternity, nor broken off
from it, yet come out of it; so thou art not a part of God, nor broken off from
him, yet born out of him. Thou shouldst only will that which God willeth, only
love that which he loveth, cooperate, and unite with him in the whole form of
thy life; because all that thou art, all that thou hast, is only a spark of his
own life and Spirit derived into thee. If thou desirest, and turn towards the
sun, all the blessings of the Deity will spring up in thee; Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, will make their abode with thee. If thou turnest in towards
thyself, to live to thyself, to be happy in the workings of an own will, to be
rich in the sharpness and acuteness of thy own reason, thou choosest to be a
weed, and canst only have such a life, spirit and blessing from God, as a
thistle has from the sun. But to return.
[App-1-13] 4. To suppose a willing, understanding being, created out of
nothing, is a great absurdity. For as thinking and willing must have always
been from all eternity, or they could never have been either in eternity, or
time; so, wherever they are found in any particular, finite beings, they must
of all necessity, be direct communications, or propagations of that thinking
and willing, which never could begin to be.
[App-1-14] The creation therefore of a soul, is not the creation of thinking
and willing, or the making that to be, and to think, which before had nothing
of being, or thought; but it is the bringing the powers of thinking and willing
out of their eternal state in the one God, into a beginning state of a
self-conscious life, distinct from God. And this is God's omnipotent, creating
ability, that he can make the powers of his own nature become creatural,
living, personal images of what he is in himself, in a state of distinct
personality from him: so that the creature is one, in its finite, limited
state, as God is one, and yet hath nothing in it, but that which was in God
before it came into it: for the creature, be it what it will, high or low, can
be nothing else, but a limited participation of the nature of the creator.
Nothing can be in the creature, but what came from the creator, and the creator
can give nothing to the creature, but that which it hath in itself to give.
And if beings could be created out of nothing, the whole creation could be no
more a proof of the being of God, than if it had sprung up of itself out of
nothing: for if they are brought into being out of nothing, then they can have
nothing of God in them; and so can bear no testimony of God; but are as good a
proof, that there is no God, as that there is one. But if they have anything
of God in them, then they cannot be said to be created out of nothing.
[App-1-15] 5. That the souls of men were not created out of nothing, but are
born out of an eternal original, is plain from hence; from that delight in, and
desire of eternal existence, which is so strong and natural to the soul of man.
For nothing can delight in, or desire eternity, or so much as form a notion of
it, or think upon it, or any way reach after it, but that alone which is
generated from it, and come out of it. For it is a self-evident truth, that
nothing can look higher, or further back, than into its own original; and
therefore, nothing can look or reach back into eternity, but that which came
out of it. This is as certain, as that a line reaches, and can reach no
further back, than to that point from whence it arose.
[App-1-16] Our bodily eyes are born out of the firmamental light of this world,
and therefore they can look no further than the firmament: but our thoughts
know no bounds; therefore they are come out of that which is boundless. The
eyes of our minds can look as easily backwards into that eternity which always
hath been, as into that which ever shall be; and therefore it is plain, that
that which thinks and wills in us, which so easily, so delightfully, so
naturally penetrates into all eternity, has always had an eternal existence,
and is only a ray or spark of the divine nature, brought out into the form of a
creature, or a limited, personal existence, by the creating power of God.
[App-1-17] 6. Again. Every soul shrinks back, and is frightened at the very
thought of falling into nothing. Now this undeniably proves, that the soul was
not created out of nothing. For it is an eternal truth, spoken by all nature,
that everything strongly aspires after, and cannot be easy, till it finds and
enjoys that original out of which it arose. If the soul therefore was brought
forth out of nothing, all its being would be a burden to it; it would want to
be dissolved, and to be delivered from every kind and degree of sensibility;
and nothing could be so sweet and agreeable to it, as to think of falling back
into that nothingness, out of which it was called forth by its creation. Thus
is the eternal, immortal, divine nature of the soul, which the schools prove
with so much difficulty one of the most obvious, self-evident truths in all
nature. For nothing but that which is eternal in its own nature, can have the
least thought about eternity.
[App-1-18] If a beast had not the nature of the earth in it, nothing that is on
the earth, or springs out of it, could be in the least degree agreeable to it,
or desired by it. If the soul had not the nature of eternity in it, nothing
that is eternal could give it the smallest pleasure, or be able to make any
kind of impression upon it. For as nothing can taste, or relish, or enter into
the agreeable sensations of this world, but that which hath the nature of this
world in it; so nothing can taste, or relish, or look into eternity with any
kind of pleasure, but that which hath the nature of eternity in it.
[App-1-19] 7. If the soul was not born, or created out of God, it could have
no happiness in God, no desire, nor any possibility of enjoying him. If it had
nothing of God in it, it must stand in the utmost distance of contrariety to
him, and be utterly incapable of living, moving, and having its being in God:
for everything must have the nature of that, out of which it was created, and
must live, and have its being in that root or ground from whence it sprung. If
therefore there was nothing of God in the soul, nothing that is in God could do
the soul any good, or have any kind of communication with it; but the gulf of
separation between God and the soul, would be even greater than that which is
between heaven and hell.
[App-1-20] 8. But let us rejoice, that our soul is a thinking, willing being,
full of thoughts, cares, longings, and desires of eternity; for this is our
full proof, that our descent is from God himself, that we are born out of him,
breathed forth from him; that our soul is of an eternal nature, made a
thinking, willing, understanding creature out of that which hath willed and
thought in God from all eternity; and therefore must, for ever and ever, be a
partaker of the eternity of God.
[App-1-21] And here you may behold the sure ground of the absolute
impossibility of the annihilation of the soul. Its essences never began to be,
and therefore can never cease to be; they had an eternal reality before they
were in, or became a distinct soul, and therefore they must have the same
eternal reality in it. It was the eternal breath of God before it came into
man, and therefore the eternity of God must be inseparable from it. It is no
more a property of the divine omnipotence to be able to annihilate a soul, than
to be able to make an eternal truth become a fiction of yesterday: and to think
it a lessening of the power of God, to say, that he cannot annihilate the soul,
is as absurd, as to say, that it is a lessening of the light of the sun, if it
cannot destroy, or darken its own rays of light.
[App-1-22] O, dear reader, stay a while in this important place, and learn to
know thyself: all thy senses make thee to know and feel, that thou standest in
the vanity of time; but every motion, stirring, imagination, and thought of thy
mind, whether in fancying, fearing, or loving everlasting life, is the same
infallible proof, that thou standest in the midst of eternity, art an offspring
and inhabitant of it, and must be for ever inseparable from it. Ask when the
first thought sprung up, find out the birth-day of truth, and then thou wilt
have found out, when the essences of thy soul first began to be. Were not the
essences of thy soul as old, as unbeginning, as unchangeable, as everlasting as
truth itself, truth would be at the same distance from thee, as absolutely
unfit for thee, as utterly unable to have any communion with thee, as to be the
food of a worm.
[App-1-23] The ox could not feed upon the grass, or receive any delight or
nourishment from it, unless grass and the ox had one and the same earthly
nature and original; thy mind could receive no truth, feel no delight and
satisfaction in the certainty, beauty, and harmony of it, unless truth and the
mind stood both in the same place, had one and the same unchangeable nature,
unbeginning original. If there will come a time, when thought itself shall
cease, when all the relations and connections of truth shall be untied; then,
but not till then, shall the knot, or band of thy soul's life be unloosed. It
is a spark of the Deity, and therefore has the unbeginning, unending life of
God in it. It knows nothing of youth, or age, because it is born eternal. It
is a life that must burn for ever, either as a flame of light and love in the
glory of the divine majesty, or as a miserable firebrand in that god, which is
a consuming fire.
[App-1-24] 9. It is impossible, that this world, in the state and condition it
is now in, should have been an immediate and original creation of God: this is
as impossible, as that God should create evil, either natural or moral. That
this world hath evil in all its parts; that its matter is in a corrupt,
disordered state, full of grossness, disease, impurity, wrath, death and
darkness, is as evident, as that there is light, beauty, order and harmony
everywhere to be found in it. Therefore it is as impossible, that this outward
state and condition of things, should be a first and immediate work of God, as
that there should be good and evil in God himself. All storms and tempests,
every fierceness of heat, every wrath of cold proves with the same certainty,
that outward nature is not a first work of God, as the selfishness, envy,
pride, wrath, and malice of devils, and men proves, that they are not in the
first state of their creation. As no kind or degree of moral evil could
possibly have its cause in, or from God, so there cannot be the least shadow of
imperfection and disorder in outward nature, but what must have sprung up in
the same manner, and from the same causes, as sickness and corrupt flesh is
come into the human body, namely, from the sin of the creature. Storms,
tempests, gravel, stone, sour and dead earth are the same things, the same
diseases, the same effects of sin, produced in the same manner in the outward
body of nature, as corrupt flesh, fevers, dropsies, plagues, gravel, stone, and
gout, are produced in the outward body of man. For that, and that only which
produces stone in the body of man, did produce stone in the outward nature, as
shall plainly appear by and by. For nature within, and without man, is one and
the same, and has but one and the same way of working; a stone in the body, and
a stone out of the body of man, proceeds from one and the same disorder of
nature.
[App-1-25] When therefore you see a diseased, gouty, leprous, asthmatical,
scorbutic man, you can with the utmost certainty say, this is not that human
body which God first created in paradise; so, when you see the disorders of
heat and cold, the poisonous earth, unfruitful seasons, and malignant qualities
of outward nature, you can with the same certainty affirm, this state of nature
is not a first creation of God, but that same must have happened to it, which
has happened to the body of man. For dark, sour, hard, dead earth, can no more
be a first, immediate creation of God, than a wrathful devil, as such, can be
created by him. For dark, sour, dead earth is as disordered in its kind, as
the devils are, and has as certainly lost its first heavenly condition and
nature, as the devils have lost theirs. But now, as in man, the little world,
there is excellency and perfection enough to prove, that human nature is the
work of an all-perfect being, yet, so much impurity and disease of corrupt
flesh and blood, as undeniably shows, that sin has almost quite spoiled the
work of God. So, in the great world, the footsteps of an infinite wisdom in
the order and harmony of the whole, sufficiently appears; yet, the disorders,
tumults, and evils of nature, plainly demonstrate, that the present condition
of this world is only the remains or ruins, first, of a heaven spoiled by the
fall of angels, and then of a paradise lost by the sin of man. So that man,
and the world in which he lives, lie both in the same state of disorder and
impurity, have both the same marks of life and death in them, both bring forth
the same sort of evils, both want a redeemer, and have need of the same kind of
death and resurrection, before they can come to their first state of purity and
perfection.
[App-1-26] 10. That this outward world was not created out of nothing, is
plainly taught by St. Paul, who declares, Rom.i.20, that the creation of the
world is out of the invisible things of God; so that the outward condition and
frame of invisible nature, is a plain manifestation of that spiritual world
from whence it is descended. For as every outside necessarily supposes an
inside, and as temporal light and darkness must be the product of eternal light
and darkness, so this outward, visible state of things necessarily supposes
some inward, invisible state, from whence it is come into this degree of
outwardness. Thus all that is on earth is only a change or alteration of
something that was in heaven: and heaven itself is nothing else but the first
glorious out-birth, the majestic manifestation, the beatific visibility of the
one God in Trinity. And thus we find out, how this temporal nature is related
to God; it is only a gross out-birth of that which is an eternal nature, or a
blessed heaven, and stands only in such a degree of distance from it, as water
does to air; and this is the reason why the last fire will, and must turn this
gross, temporal nature into its first, heavenly state. But to suppose the
gross matter of this world to be made out of nothing, or compacted nothing, is
more absurd, than to suppose ice that has congealed nothing, a yard that is not
made up of inches, or a pound that is not the product of ounces.
[App-1-27] 11. And indeed to suppose this, or any other material world to be
made out of nothing, has all the same absurdities in it, as the supposing
angels and spirits, to be created out of nothing.
[App-1-28] All the qualities of all beings are eternal; no real quality or
power can appear in any creature, but what has its eternal root, or generating
cause in the creator. If a quality could begin to be in a creature, which did
not always exist in the creator, it would be no absurdity to say, that a thing
might begin to be, without any cause either of its beginning, or being. All
qualities, properties, or whatever can be affirmed of God, are self-existent,
and necessary existent. Self and necessary existence is not a particular
attribute of God, but is the general nature of everything that can be affirmed
of God. All qualities and properties are self-existent in God: now, they
cannot change their nature when they are derived, or formed into creatures, but
must have the same self-birth, and necessary existence in the creature, which
they had in the creator. The creature begins to be, when, and as it pleased
God; but the qualities which are become creaturely, and which constitute the
creature, are self-existent, just as the same qualities are in God. Thus,
thinking, willing, and desire can have no outward maker, their maker is in
themselves, they are self- existent powers wherever they are, whether in God,
or in the creature, and as they form themselves in God, so they form themselves
in the creature. But now, if no quality can begin to be, if all the qualities
and powers of creatures must be eternal and necessary existent in God, before
they can have any existence in any creature; then it undeniably follows, that
every created thing must have its whole nature from, and out of the divine
nature.
[App-1-29] All qualities are not only good, but infinitely perfect, as they are
in God; and it is absolutely impossible, that they should have any evil or
defect in them, as they are in the one God, who is the great and universal all.
Because, where all properties are, there must necessarily be an all possible
perfection: and that which must always have all in itself, must, by an absolute
necessity, be always all perfect. But the same qualities, thus infinitely good
and perfect in God, may become imperfect and evil in the creature; because in
the creature, being limited and finite, they may be divided and separated from
one another by the creature itself. Thus strength and fire in the divine
nature, are nothing else but the strength and flame of love, and never can be
anything else; but in the creature, strength and fire may be separated from
love, and then they are become an evil, they are wrath and darkness, and all
mischief: and thus that same strength and quality, which in creatures making a
right use of their own will, or self-motion, becomes their goodness and
perfection, doth in creatures making a wrong use of their will, become their
evil and mischievous nature; and it is a truth that deserves well to be
considered, that there is no goodness in any creature, from the highest to the
lowest, but in its continuing to be such an union of qualities and powers, as
God has brought together in its creation.
[App-1-30] In the highest order of created beings, this is their standing in
their first perfection, this is their fulfilling of the whole will or law of
God, this is their piety, their song of praise, their eternal adoration of
their great creator. On the other hand, there is no evil, no guilt, no
deformity in any creature, but in its dividing and separating itself from
something which God had given to be in union with it. This, and this alone, is
the whole nature of all good, and all evil in the creature, both in the moral
and natural world, in spiritual and material things. For instance, dark, fiery
wrath in the soul, is not only very like, but it is the self-same thing in the
soul which a wrathful poison is in the flesh. Now, the qualities of poison are
in themselves, all of them good qualities, and necessary to every life; but
they are become a poisonous evil, because they are separated from some other
qualities. Thus also the qualities of fire and strength that constitute an
evil wrath in the soul, are in themselves very good qualities, and necessary to
every good life; but they are become an evil wrath, because separated from some
other qualities with which they should be united.
[App-1-31] The qualities of the devil and all fallen angels, are good
qualities; they are the very same which they received from their infinitely
perfect creator, the very same which are, and must be in all heavenly angels;
but they are an hellish, abominable malignity in them now, because they have,
by their own self-motion, separated them from the light and love which should
have kept them glorious angels.
[App-1-32] And here may be seen at once, in the clearest light, the true origin
of all evil in the creation, without the least imputation upon the creator.
God could not possibly create a creature to be an infinite all, like himself:
God could not bring any creature into existence, but by deriving into it the
self-existent, self-generating, self-moving qualities of his own nature: for
the qualities must be in the creature, that which they were in the creator,
only in a state of limitation; and therefore, every creature must be finite,
and must have a self-motion, and so must be capable of moving right and wrong,
of uniting or dividing from what it will, or of falling from that state in
which it ought to stand: but as every quality, in every creature, both within
and without itself is equally good, and equally necessary to the perfection of
the creature, since there is nothing that is evil in it, nor can become evil to
the creature, but from itself, by its separating that from itself, with which
it can, and ought to be united, it plainly follows, that evil can no more be
charged upon God, than darkness can be charged upon the sun; because every
quality is equally good, every quality of fire is as good as every quality of
light, and only becomes an evil to that creature, who, by his own self-motion,
has separated fire from the light in his own nature.
[App-1-33] 12. If a delicious, fragrant fruit had a power of separating itself
from that rich spirit, fine taste, smell, and color which it receives from the
virtue of the sun, and the spirit of the air; or if it could in the beginning
of its growth, turn away from the sun, and receive no virtue from it, then it
would stand in its own first birth of wrath, sourness, bitterness, and
astringency, just as the devils do, who have turned back into their own dark
root, and rejected the Light and Spirit of God: so that the hellish nature of a
devil is nothing else, but its own first forms of life, withdrawn, or separated
from the heavenly light and love; just as the sourness, astringency, and
bitterness of a fruit, are nothing else but the first forms of its own
vegetable life before it has reached the virtue of the sun, and the spirit of
the air.
[App-1-34] And as a fruit, if it had a sensibility of itself, would be full of
torment, as soon as it was shut up in the first forms of its life, in its own
astringency, sourness, and stinging bitterness: so the angels, when they had
turned back into these very same first forms of their own life, and broken off
from the heavenly light and love of God, they became their own hell. No hell
was made for them, no new qualities came into them, no vengeance or pains from
the God of love fell upon them; they only stood in that state of division and
separation from the Son, and Holy Spirit of God, which, by their own motion,
they had made for themselves. They had nothing in them, but what they had from
God, the first forms of an heavenly life, nothing but what the most heavenly
beings have, and must have, to all eternity; but they had them in a state of
self-torment, because they had separated them from that birth of light and
love, which alone could make them glorious sons, and blessed images of the Holy
Trinity.
[App-1-35] The same strong desire, fiery wrath, and stinging motion is in holy
angels, that is in devils, just as the same sourness, astringency, and biting
bitterness is in a full ripened fruit, which was there before it received the
riches of the light and spirit of the air. In a ripened fruit, its first
sourness, astringency, and bitterness is not lost, nor destroyed, but becomes
the real cause of all its rich spirit, fine taste, fragrant smell, and
beautiful color; take away the working, contending nature of these first
qualities, and you annihilate the spirit, taste, smell, and virtue of the
fruit, and there would be nothing left for the sun and the spirit of the air to
enrich.
[App-1-36] Just in the same manner, that which in a devil is an evil
selfishness, a wrathful fire, a stinging motion, is in an holy angel, the
everlasting kindling of a divine life, the strong birth of an heavenly love, it
is a real cause of an everlasting, ever-triumphing joyfulness, an
ever-increasing sensibility of bliss.
[App-1-37] Take away the working, contending nature of these first qualities,
which in a devil, are only a serpentine selfishness, wrath, fire, and stinging
motion; take away these, I say, from holy angels, and you leave them neither
light, nor love, nor heavenly glory, nothing for the birth of the Son, Holy
Spirit of God to rise up in.
[App-1-38] So that here you may see this glorious truth, that the love and
goodness of God is as plain and undeniable in having given to the fallen
angels, those very qualities and powers which are now their hell, as in giving
the first sourness, astringency and bitterness to fruits, which alone makes
them capable of their delicious spirit, taste, color, and smell.
[App-1-39] 13. And thus you see the uniform life of all the creatures of God;
how they are all raised, enriched, and blessed by the same life of God, derived
into different kingdoms of creatures. For the beginnings and progress of a
perfect life in fruits, and the beginnings and progress of a perfect life in
angels, are not only like to one another, but are the very same thing, or the
workings of the very same qualities, only in different kingdoms. Astringency
in a fruit, is the very same quality, and does the same work in a fruit, that
attracting desire does in a spiritual being; it is the same beginner, former,
and supporter of a creaturely life in the one, as in the other. No creature in
heaven, or earth, can begin to be, but by this astringency, or desire, being
made the ground of it: and yet this astringency kept from the virtue of the
sun, can only produce a poisonous fruit, and this astringent desire in an
angel, turned from the light of God, can only make a devil. The biting,
stinging bitterness of a fruit, if you could add thought to it, would be the
very gnawing envy of the devil: and the envious motion in the devil's nature,
would be nothing else but that stinging bitterness which is in a fruit, if you
could take thought from the devil's motion.
[App-1-40] 14. From this attraction, astringency, or desire, which is one and
the same quality in every individual thing, which is the first form of being
and life, the very ground of every creature, from the highest angel to the
lowest vegetable, we are led by an unerring thread to the first desire, or that
desire which is in the divine nature. For as this attraction, or astringent
desire is in spiritual and corporeal things, one and the same quality, working
in the same manner, so is it one and the same quality with that first,
unbeginning desire, which is in the divine nature.
[App-1-41] That there is an attracting desire in the divine nature, is
undeniable, because attraction is essential to all bodies; and desire, which is
the same quality, is absolutely inseparable from all intelligible beings;
therefore, that which is necessarily existent in the creature, upon the
supposition of its creation, must necessarily be in the creator; because no
inherent, operative quality can be in the creature, unless the same kind of
quality had always been in the creator: therefore, attraction or desire, which
are inseparable from every created being and life, are only various
participations of the divine nature; or emanations from it, formed into
different kingdoms of creatures, and working in all of them according to their
respective natures.
[App-1-42] In vegetables, it is that attraction, or desire, which brings every
growing thing to its highest perfection: in angels, it is that blessed hunger,
by which they are filled with the divine nature: in devils, it is turned into
that serpentine selfishness, or crooked desire, which makes them a hell and
torment to themselves.
[App-1-43] 15. On the other hand, as we thus prove a posteriori, from a view
of the creature, that there must be an attracting desire in the divine nature;
so we can prove a priori also, from a consideration of God, that there must be
an attracting desire in everything that ever was, or can be created by God: for
nothing can come into being, but because God wills and desires it; therefore
the desire of God is the creator, the original of everything. The creating
will, or desire of God, is not a distant, or separate thing, as when a man
wills or desires something to be done, or removed at a distance from him; but
it is an omnipresent, working will and desire, which is itself, the beginning
and forming of the thing desired. Our own will, and desirous imagination, when
they work and create in us a settled aversion, or fixed love of anything,
resemble in some degree, the creating power of God, which makes things out of
itself, or its own working desire. And our will, and working imagination could
not have the power that it has now even after the fall, but because it is a
product, or spark of that first divine will or desire which is omnipotent.
[App-1-44] 16. Here therefore we have plainly found the true original, or
first source of all things. The desire of God is the first former, generator,
and creator of all things; they are all the births of this omnipotent, working
desire; for everything that comes into being, must have the nature of that
power that formed it, and therefore the nature of every creature must stand in
an attractive desire, that is, everything must be a created, attractive power;
because it is the birth, or product of a desire, or attractive power, and could
neither come into, nor continue in being, but because it was generated not only
by, but out of an attracting desire. And herein lies the band, or knot of all
created being and life.
[App-1-45] 17. Will or desire in the Deity, is justly considered as God the
Father, who from eternity to eternity, wills or generates only the Son, from
which eternal generating, the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds: and this is the
infinite perfection or fullness of beatitude of the life of the Triune God.
[App-1-46] Now, as the unbeginning, eternal desire is in God, so is the created
desire in the creature; it stands in the same tendency, hath the nature of the
divine desire, because it is a branch out of it, or created from it. In the
Deity, the eternal will or desire, is a desiring, or generating the Son, whence
the Holy Spirit proceeds; the desire that is come out of God in the form of a
creature, has the same tendency, it is a desire of the Son and Holy Spirit.
And every created thing in heaven and earth attains its perfection, by its
gaining in some degree, the birth of the Son and Holy Spirit of God in it: for
all attraction and desire in the creature, generates in them as it did in God;
and so the birth of the Son and Holy Spirit of God arises in some degree, or
other, in all creatures that are in their proper state of perfection.
[App-1-47] 18. And here lies the ground of that plain, and most fundamental
doctrine of scripture, that the Father is the creator, the Son the regenerator,
and the Holy Spirit the sanctifier. For what is this but saying in the
plainest manner, that as there are three in God, so there must be three in the
creature, that as the three stand related to one another in God, so must they
stand in the same relation in the creature. For if a threefold life of God
must have distinct shares in the creation, blessing, and perfection of man, is
it not a demonstration, that the life of man must stand in the same threefold
state, and have such a Trinity in it, as has its true likeness to that Trinity
which is in God?
[App-1-48] That which generates in God, must generate in the creature; and that
which is generated in God, must be generated in the creature; and that which
proceeds from this generation in the Deity, must proceed from this generation
in the creature: and therefore, the same threefold life must be in the creature
in the same manner as it is in God. For a creature that can only exist, and be
blessed by the distinct operation of a Triune God upon it, must have the same
Triune nature that is answerable to it. And herein lies our true, and easy,
and sound, and edifying knowledge and belief of the mystery of a Trinity in
Unity: and this is all that the scripture teaches us concerning it. It is not
a doctrine that requires learned or nice speculations, in order to be rightly
apprehended by us. But when with the scriptures, we believe the Father to be
our creator, the Son our regenerator, and the Holy Spirit our sanctifier; then
we are learned enough in this mystery, and begin to know the Triune God in the
same manner in time, that we shall know him in eternity.
[App-1-49] And the reason why this great mystery of a Trinity in the Deity is
thus revealed to us, and the necessity of a baptism in the Name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, laid upon us, is this; it is to show us, that the divine,
Triune life of God is lost in us, and that nothing less than a birth from the
Son and Holy Spirit of God in us, can restore us to our first likeness to that
Triune God, who at first created us. This I have fully shown in the little
treatise upon regeneration.
[App-1-50] 19. When man was created in his original perfection, the Holy
Trinity was his creator; the breath of lives, which became a living soul, was
the breath of the Triune God: but when man began to will, and desire, that is,
to generate contrary to the Deity, then the life of the Triune God extinguished
in him.
[App-1-51] The desire of man being turned from God, lost the birth of the Son,
and the proceeding of the Holy Spirit; and so fell into, or under the light and
spirit of this world: that is, of a paradisaical man, enjoying union and
communion with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and living on earth in such
enjoyment of God, as the angels live in heaven, he became an earthly creature,
subject to the dominion of this outward world, capable of all its evil
influences, subject to its vanity and mortality; and as to his outward life,
stood only in the highest rank of animals. This and this alone, is the true
nature and degree of the fall of man; it was neither more nor less than this.
It was a falling out of one world, or kingdom, into another, it was changing
the life, Light and Spirit of God, for the light and spirit of this world.
Thus it was that Adam died the very day of his transgression, he died to all
the influences and operations of the kingdom of God upon him, as we die to the
influences of this world, when the soul leaves the body; and, on the other
hand, all the influences, operations and powers of the elements of this life
became opened in him, as they are in every animal at its birth into this world.
[App-1-52] All other accounts of that fall, which only suppose the loss of some
moral perfection, or natural acuteness of his rational powers, are not only
senseless fictions, but are an express denial of the Old and New Testament
account of it; for the Old Testament expressly says, that Adam was to die the
day of his transgression, and therefore it is certain, that he then did die,
and that the fall was his losing his first life: and to say that he did not die
to that first life in which he was created, is the same denial of scripture, as
to say, that he did not eat of the forbidden tree.
[App-1-53] Again, the same scripture assures us, that after the fall, his eyes
were opened; I suppose this is a proof, that before the fall, they were shut.
And what is this, but saying in the plainest manner, that before the fall, the
life, light and spirit of this world, were shut out of him? and that the
opening of his eyes, was only another way of saying, that the life and light of
this world were opened in him?
[App-1-54] If an angel, or any inhabitant of heaven, was to be sent of a
message into this world, it must be supposed, that neither the darkness, nor
light of this world, could act according to their nature upon him; and
therefore, though he was here, he must be said not to have the opened eyes of
this world: but if this heavenly messenger should be taken with our manner of
life, should be in doubts about returning to heaven, and long to have such
flesh and blood as ours is, as earnestly as Adam longed to eat of the earthly
tree; and if by this longing, he should actually obtain that which he desired;
must it not then be said of him, when he had got this new nature, his eyes were
opened, to see light and darkness; and that only for this reason, because the
heavenly life was departed from him, and the earthly life of this world was
opened in him? And thus it was that Adam died, and thus his eyes were opened.
[App-1-55] Again, when his eyes were thus opened, or the light and life of this
world thus opened in him, he was immediately ashamed and shocked at the sight
of his own body, and wanted to hide it from himself, and from the sight of the
sun. Now, how could this have happened to him, if his body had not undergone
some very extraordinary change, from a state of glory and perfection, to a
lamentable degree of vileness and impurity?
[App-1-56] All the terror at his fallen state, seems to arise from the sad
condition, in which he saw and felt his outward body. This made him ashamed of
himself; this made him tremble, at hearing the voice of God; this made him
creep behind the trees, and endeavor to hide and cover his body with leaves.
[App-1-57] And is not this the same thing, as if Adam had said, "All my sin, my
guilt, my misery, and shame, is published before heaven and earth, by this sad
state and condition in which my body now appears."
[App-1-58] But now, what was this sad state and condition of his body? What did
Adam see in the manner and form of it that filled him with such confusion?
Why, he only saw that he was fallen from his paradisaical glory, to have the
same gross flesh and blood as the beasts and animals of this world have; which
was, to bring forth an offspring in the same earthly manner, as they did. He
could see, and be ashamed of no other deformity in his body, but that which he
had in common with the animals of this world; and therefore there was nothing
else in his outward form that he could be ashamed of; and yet it was his
outward form that filled him with confusion. And is not this the greatest of
all proofs, that before his fall, his body had not this nature and condition of
the beasts in it? Is it not the same thing, as if he had said, "this body
which now makes me ashamed, and which I want to hide, though it be only with
thin leaves, because it brings me down amongst the animals of this world, is
not that first body of glory into which God at first breathed the breath of
lives, and in which I became a living soul."
[App-1-59] Again, if Adam's body had been of the same kind of flesh and blood
as ours is now, only in a better state of health and vigor, how could he have
been created immortal? If he was not created immortal, how can it be said,
that sin alone brought mortality, or death into human nature? But if he had
immortality in his first created state, then he must have such a body as none
of the elements, or elementary things of this world could act upon; for there
is no death in any creature of this world, but what is brought upon it by that
strife and destruction which the four elements bring upon one another. But if
sin alone gave the elements, and all elementary things their first power of
acting upon the body of Adam; then it is plain, that before his sin, he had
not, could not have a body of such flesh and blood as we now have, but that he
stood, as to the state, nature, and condition of his outward body, at as great
a distance and difference from the animals of this world, as heaven does from
earth, and was created with flesh and blood as much exalted above, and superior
to the nature and power of all the elements, as the beasts of this world are
under them.
[App-1-60] And herein plainly appears the true sense of that saying, "God made
not death," that is, he made not that which is mortal, or dying in the human
nature, but sin alone formed and produced that in man, which could, and must
die like the bodies of beasts. Death, and the grave, and the resurrection, are
all standing proofs, that the body of bestial flesh and blood, which we now
have, at the sight of which Adam was ashamed, which must die, which can rot in
the grave, which must not be seen after the resurrection, was not that first
body, in which Adam appeared before God in paradise: for it is an undeniable
truth of scripture, that this flesh and blood cannot enter into the kingdom of
God; it must be a truth of the same certainty, that this flesh and blood could
not by God himself be brought into paradise; but that it must have the same
original with every other polluted thing that is an abomination in his sight,
or incapable of entering into the kingdom of God.
[App-1-61] 20. That the gospel also plainly shows, that man was created in the
dignity and glorious enjoyment of the Triune life of God, and that his fall,
was a falling into the earthly life of the light and spirit of this world, I
have sufficiently proved from the greatest articles of the Christian faith,
concerning the necessity, nature, and manner of our redemption, in the book of
Christian Regeneration. I have there shown, that baptism in the Name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, signifies nothing but our being born again into
this Triune life of God. That the necessity of being born again of the Word or
Son of God, of being born of the Spirit, or receiving him as a sanctifier of
our newly raised nature, plainly proves that what we lost by the fall, was this
Triune life of God: he that denies this, denies the whole of the Christian
redemption. {See Spirit of Prayer, Part II, page 63, &c., page 91. Way to
Divine Knowledge, pages 39-53.}
[App-1-62] 21. It has been already observed, that when man was created in his
original perfection, the Holy Trinity was his creator; but when man was fallen,
or had lost his first divine life, then there began a new language of a
redeeming religion. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were now to be considered, not
as creating every man as they created the first, but as differently concerned
in raising the fallen race of mankind, to that first likeness of the Holy
Trinity in which their first father was created: hence it is, that the
scriptures speak of the Father, as drawing, and calling men; because the desire
which is from the Father's nature, must be the first mover, stirrer, and
beginner. This desire must be moved and brought into an anguishing state, and
have the agitation of a fire that is kindling; and then men are truly drawn by
the Father.
[App-1-63] The Son of God is now considered as the regenerator or raiser of a
new birth in us; because he enters a second time into the life of the soul,
that his own nature and likeness may be again generated in it, and that he may
be that to the soul in its state, which he is to the Father in the Deity.
[App-1-64] The Holy Ghost is represented as the sanctifier, or finisher of the
divine life restored in us; because as in the Deity, the Holy Ghost proceeds
from the Father and the Son, as the amiable, blessed finisher of the Triune
life of God; so the fallen nature of man cannot be raised out of its unholy
state, cannot be blessed and sanctified with its true degree of the divine
life, till the Holy Spirit arises up in it.
[App-1-65] Since then the Triune God, or the three persons in the one God, must
have this difference of shares, must reach out this different help to the
raising up of fallen man, it is undeniable, that the first created man stood in
the image and real likeness of the one God, not only representing, but really
having in his birth and life, the birth and life of the Holy Trinity. God the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had such a Unity in Trinity in man, as they had in
the Deity itself: how else could man be the image and likeness of the Holy
Trinity, if it was not such a birth in man, as it was in itself? Or, how could
the Holy Trinity dwell and operate in man, each person according to its
respective nature, unless there was the same threefold life in man as there is
in God? How could the Holy Trinity be an object of man's worship and
adoration, if the Holy Trinity had not produced itself in man? The creature is
only to own and worship its creator; therefore Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must
have each of them their creaturely offspring, or product in man, if man is to
worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If therefore you deny angels, and the
souls of perfect men to have the triune nature, of life of God in them: if you
deny that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have such union and relation in the
soul, as they have out of it, you are guilty of as great heresy and apostasy
from the gospel, as if you denied the Father to be the creator or him that
calleth and draweth, the Son to be the redeemer, or him that regenerateth, and
the Holy Spirit to be him that sanctifieth human nature.
[App-1-66] 22. Again: consider this great truth, which will much illustrate
this matter; you can be an inhabitant of no world, or a partaker of its life,
but by its being inwardly the birth of your own life, or by having the nature
and condition of that world born in you. As thus, hell must be inwardly born in
the soul, it must arise up within it, as it does without it, before the soul
can become an inhabitant of it.
[App-1-67] Again: that which is the life of this outward world, viz., its fire,
and light, and air, must have such a state and birth within you, as they have
without you, before you can be an inhabitant or partaker of the life of this
world; that is, fire must be in you, must be the same fire, have the same place
and nature within you, have the same relation to the light and air that is
within you, as it has without you, or else the fire of the outward world,
cannot keep up, or have any communion with your own life.
[App-1-68] The light of this world can signify nothing to you, cannot reach or
enrich you with its powers and virtues, if the same light is not arisen in the
same manner in the kindling of your own life, as it arises in the outward
world.
[App-1-69] The air also of this world can do you no good, can be no blower up
and preserver of your life, but because it has the same birth in you, that it
has in outward nature. And therefore it must be a truth of the greatest
certainty, that so it must of all necessity be with respect to the kingdom of
God, or that life which is to be had in the beatific presence of God; it must,
by an absolute necessity, have the same birth within you, as it has without
you, before you can enter into it, or become an inhabitant of it: if you are to
live, and be eternally blessed in the triune life, or beatific presence of God,
that triune life, must, of the utmost necessity, first make itself creaturely
in you; it must be and arise in you, as it does without you, before you can
possibly enter into any communion with it.
[App-1-70] Now is there anything more plain and scriptural, more easy to be
conceived, more pious to be believed, and more impossible to be denied, than
all this? And yet this is all that I have said, in two propositions in the
treatise upon Christian Regeneration: it is there said, "Man was created by God
after his own image, and in his own likeness, a living mirror of the divine
nature; where Father, Son, and Holy Ghost each brought forth their own nature
in a creaturely manner." Now, what is this, but saying, that the Holy Trinity
brought forth a creature in its own likeness, standing in a creaturely birth of
the divine, triune life? If it did not stand thus, how could it have its form
or creation from the Holy Trinity? Or how could it without this triune life in
itself, enter into, or be a partaker of the triune life or presence of God? In
the next proposition it is said; "In it, that is, in this created image of the
Holy Trinity, the Father's nature generated the divine Word, or Son of God, and
the Holy Ghost proceeded from them both as an amiable, moving life of both.
This was the likeness or image of God, in which the first man was created, a
true offspring of God, in whom the divine birth sprung up as in the Deity,
where Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, saw themselves in a creaturely manner."
[App-1-71] Now, what is this, but saying in the plainest manner, only thus
much, that the triune, creaturely life stood in the same birth and generation
of its threefold life, as the Deity doth, whose image, likeness, and offspring
it is? And can it possibly be otherwise; for if the creature cometh from the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as their created image and likeness, must not that
which it hath from the Father, be of the nature of the Father, that which it
hath from the Son, be of the nature of the Son, and that which it hath from the
Holy Ghost, be of the nature of the Holy Ghost? And must they not therefore
stand in the creature in such relation to one another, as they do in the
creator? If it is the nature of the Father to generate, if it is the nature of
the Son to be generated, if it is the nature of the Holy Ghost to proceed from
both, must not that which you have from the Father generate in you, that which
you have from the Son be generated in you, and that which you have from the
Holy Ghost, proceed from both in you? All which is only saying this plain and
obvious truth, that that being, or created life, which you have from Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, must stand in such a triune relation within you as it does
without you; that having this threefold likeness of God, you may be capable of
entering into an enjoyment of his triune, beatific life or presence.
[App-1-72] For, consider again this instance, with regard to the life of this
world. The fire, and light, and air, of outward nature, must become creaturely
in you; that is, you must have a fire that is your own creaturely fire, you
must have a light that is generated by, or from your own fire, a breath that
proceeds from your own fire and light, as the air of outward nature proceeds
from its fire and light: you must have all this nature and birth of fire, and
light, and air in your own creaturely being, or you cannot possibly live in, or
have a life from the fire, and light, and air of outward nature: no omnipotence
can make you a partaker of the life of this outward world, without having the
life of this outward world born in your own creaturely being. And therefore,
no omnipotence can make you a partaker of the beatific life or presence of the
Holy Trinity, unless that life stands in the same triune state within you, as
it does without you.
[App-1-73] The nature of this world must become creatural in you, before you
can live, or have a share in the life of this world; the triune nature of God
must breathe forth itself to stand creaturely in you, before you can live, or
have a share in the beatific life or presence of the triune God.
[App-1-74] Now, is not all this strictly according to the very outward letter,
and inward truth of the most important articles of the Christian religion? For
what else can be meant by the necessity of our being born again of the Word, or
Son of God, being born of the Spirit of God, in order to our entrance into the
kingdom of heaven? Is not this saying, that the triune life of God must first
have its birth in us, before we can enter into the triune, beatific life, or
presence of God? What else is taught us by that new birth sought for by a
baptism, in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Does it not plainly
tell us, that the triune nature of the Deity is that which wants to be born in
us, and that our redemption consists in nothing else but in the bringing forth
this new birth in us, and that, being thus born again in the likeness of the
Holy Trinity, we may be capable of its threefold blessing and happiness? The
New Testament tells us of the impossibility of our being made holy, but by the
Holy Spirit of God: now, how could we want any distinct thing particularly from
the Son of God, any distinct thing, particularly from the Holy Ghost, in order
to raise and repair our fallen nature, how could this particularity be thus
absolutely necessary, but because the holy threefold life of the Deity must
stand within us, in the birth of our own life, as it does without us, that so
we may be capable of living in God, and God in us.
[App-1-75] Search to eternity, why no devil, or beast can possibly be a
partaker of the kingdom of heaven, and there can only this one reason be
assigned for it, because neither of them have the triune, holy life of God in
them: for every created thing does, and must, and can only want, seek, unite
with, and enjoy that outwardly, which is of the same nature with itself.
Remove a devil where you will, he is still in hell, and always at the same
distance from heaven; he can touch, or taste, or reach nothing but what is in
hell. Carry a beast where you please, either to court, or to church, he is yet
at the same infinite distance from the joys and fears either of church, or
court, as the beasts that never saw anything else but their own kind: and all
this is grounded solely on this eternal truth; namely, that no being can rise
higher than its own life reaches. The circle of the birth of life in every
creature is its necessary circumference, and it cannot possibly reach any
further; and therefore it is a joyful truth, that beings created to worship and
adore the Holy Trinity, and to enter into the beatific life and presence of the
triune God, must, of all necessity, have the same triune life in their own
creaturely being. And now, what can be so glorious, so edifying, so ravishing,
as this knowledge of God and ourselves? The very thought of our standing in
this likeness and relation to the infinite creator and being of all beings, is
enough to kindle the divine life within us, and melt us into a continual love
and adoration: for how can we enough love and adore that Holy Trinity which has
created us in its own likeness, that we might live in an eternal union and
communion with it? Will anyone call this an irreverent familiarity, or bold
looking into the Holy Trinity, which is nothing else but a thankful adoration
of it, as our glorious Father and creator? It is our best and only
acknowledgement of the greatest truths of the holy scriptures; it is the
scripture doctrine of the Trinity kept in its own simplicity, separated from
scholastic speculations, where the three in God, are only distinguished by that
threefold share that they have in the creation and redemption of man. When we
thus know the Trinity in ourselves, and adore its high original in the Deity,
we are possessed of a truth of the greatest moment, that enlightens the mind
with the most solid and edifying knowledge, and opens to us the fullest
understanding of all that concerns the creation, fall, and redemption of man.
[App-1-76] Without this knowledge, all the scripture will be used as a dead
letter, and formed only into a figurative, historical system of things, that
has no ground in nature; and learned divines can only be learned in the
explication of phrases, and verbal distinctions.
[App-1-77] The first chapters of Genesis will be a knot that cannot be untied;
the mysteries of the gospel will only be called federal rites, and their inward
ground reproached as enthusiastic dreams; but when it is known, that the triune
nature of God was brought forth in the creation of man, that it was lost in his
fall, that it is restored in his redemption, a never-failing light arises in
all scripture, from Genesis to the Revelation. Everything that is said of God,
as Father, regenerator, or sanctifier of man; everything that is said of Jesus
Christ, as redeeming, forming, dwelling in, and quickening; and of the Holy
Spirit, as moving and sanctifying us: everything that is said of the holy
sacraments, or promised in and by them, has its deep and inward ground fully
discovered; and the whole Christian religion is built upon a rock, and that
rock is nature, and God will appear to be doing every good to us, that the God
of all nature can possibly do. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is wholly
practical; it is revealed to us, to discover our high original, and the
greatness of our fall, to show us the deep and profound operation of the triune
God in the recovery of the divine life in our souls; that by the means of this
mystery thus discovered, our piety may be rightly directed, our faith and
prayer have their proper objects, that the workings and aspirings of our own
hearts may cooperate, and correspond with that triune life in the Deity, which
is always desiring to manifest itself in us; for as everything that is in us,
whether it be heaven, or hell, rises up in us by a birth, and is generated in
us by the will-spirit of our souls, which kindles itself either in heaven, or
hell; so this mystery of a triune Deity manifesting itself, as a Father
creating, as a Son, or Word, regenerating, as a Holy Spirit sanctifying us, is
not to entertain our speculation with dry, metaphysical distinctions of the
Deity, but to show us from what a height and depth we are fallen, and to excite
such a prayer and faith, such a hungering and thirsting after this triune
fountain of all good, as may help to generate and bring forth in us that first
image of the Holy Trinity in which we were created, and which must be born in
us before we can enter into the state of the blessed: here we may see the
reason, why the learned world has had so many fruitless disputes about this
mystery, and why it has been so often a stone of stumbling to philosophers and
critics; it is because they began to reason about that, which never was
proposed to their reason, and which no more belongs to human learning and
philosophy, than light belongs to our ears, or sounds to our eyes. No person
has any fitness, nor any pretense, nor any ground from scripture, to think, or
say anything of the Trinity, till such time as he stands in the state of the
penitent returning prodigal, weary of his own sinful, shameful nature; and
desiring to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and then is he first
permitted to be baptized into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: this
is the first time the gospel teaches, or calls anyone to the acknowledgement of
the Holy Trinity. Now, as this knowledge is first given in baptism, and there
only as a signification of a triune life of the Deity, which must be
regenerated in the soul; so the scriptures say nothing afterwards to this
baptized penitent concerning the Trinity, but only with regard to regeneration,
everywhere only showing him how Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, all equally
divine, must draw, awaken, quicken, enlighten, move, guide, cleanse, and
sanctify the new-born Christian: is it not therefore undeniably plain, that all
abstract speculations of this mystery, how it is in itself, how it is to be
ideally conceived, or scholastically expressed by us, are a wandering from that
true light, in which the Trinity of God is set before us, which is only
revealed as a key, or direction to the true depths of that regeneration, which
is to be sought for from the triune Deity? But to go on in a further account
of the creation.
[App-1-78] 23. Now, as all creatures, whether intellectual, animate, or
inanimate, are products, or emanations of the divine desire, created out of the
Father, who from eternity to eternity generates the Son, whence the Holy Spirit
eternally proceeds; so every intelligent, created being, not fallen from its
state, stands in the same birth, or generating desire, it generates in its
degree, as God the Father generates eternally the Son, and is blessed and
perfected in the divine life, by having the Holy Spirit arise up in it.
[App-1-79] Hence it is, that those angels which stood, and continued in the
same will and desire in which they came out from God, willing and desiring as
God from all eternity had willed and desired, were by the rising up of the Holy
Spirit in them, confirmed and established in the divine life, and so became
eternally and inseparably united with the ever-blessed triune Deity.
[App-1-80] On the other hand, those angels which did not keep their will and
desire in its first created tendency, but raised up an own will and desire,
which own will and desire was their direct, full choosing and desiring to be,
and do something which they could not be, and do in God, and is therefore
properly called their aspiring to be above God, or to be without any dependence
upon him; these angels, by thus going backwards with their will and desire out
of, or from God and the divine truth, could only find, or generate that which
had the utmost contrariety to God and the divine birth, and so became under a
necessity of finding themselves in an eternal state, spirit and life that was
directly contrary to all that is good, holy, amiable, blessed and divine.
[App-1-81] Now, the will and desire in every creature is generating, and
efficacious, strictly according to the state and nature of that creature; {See
Way to Divine Knowledge, pages 139-160.} therefore, eternal beings in an
eternal state, must have an eternal power and efficacy in the working of their
wills and desires: when therefore those angels, with all the strength of their
eternal desires, turned away from, and contrary to God and the divine birth,
they could become nothing else, but beings eternally separated and broken off
from all that was God and goodness: for eternal beings that stood only in an
eternal state, acting with all their vigor, not doubting, but strongly willing,
could not do anything that had only a temporal nature and effect, because they
stood not in such a nature or such a world, and therefore what they willed and
generated with all their nature, (which was a contrariety to God) that became
the eternal state of their nature. And this is the birth and origin of hellish
beings.
[App-1-82] God had done all to them and for them, that he had done to and for
the angels that stood; he had given them the same holy beginning of their
lives, had brought them forth out of himself in the same tendency, that which
was the nature of other angels, was theirs; he could not make any established,
fixed, and unchangeable angels, because the life of everything must be a birth,
and willing beings must have a birth of their wills; he could not make them
fixed, because everything that comes from God, must so come from him, as it was
in him, a self- existent and self-moving power, and therefore no goodness of
God could hinder their having a self-motion, because they were, and could be
nothing else but creatures brought forth by, and out of his own self- existent
and self-moving nature.
[App-1-83] God is all good, and everything that comes out from him, as his
creature, product, or offspring, must come forth in that state of goodness,
which it had in him; and every creature, however high in its birth from God,
must in the beginning of its life, have a power of joining with or departing
from God, because the beginning of its life is nothing else but the beginning
of its own self-motion as a creature; and therefore no creature can have its
state or condition fixed, till it gives itself up either wholly unto God, or
turns wholly from him; for if it is an intelligent creature, it can only be so,
by having the intelligent will of God derived into it, or made creaturely in
it; but the intelligent will brought into a creaturely form, must be that which
it was in the creator, and therefore must be the same self-existent and
self-moving power that it was before it became creaturely in any angel or
spirit. And thus the cause and origin of evil, wherever it is, is absolutely
and eternally separated from God.
[App-1-84] 24. Again: as all intelligent beings can no way attain their
happiness and perfection, but by standing with their will and desire united to
God, in the same tendency in which the Father eternally generateth the Son,
from whence the Holy Spirit proceedeth as the finisher of the triune, beatific
life, so the same thing is manifestly proved to us by the lowest kind of beings
that are in this visible world; for all vegetables, by their attraction or
astringency, which is their desire, and is an outbirth of the divine desire,
reach their utmost perfection by the same progress, that is, by getting a birth
of the light and spirit of this outward world into them, and so become
infallible, though remote proofs that no life can be brought to its proper
perfection in the creature, till the image of the triune life of God, is,
according to the state and capacity of the creature, formed in it: look where
you will, everything proclaims and proves this great truth. The Christian
doctrine of the salvation of mankind by a birth of the Son, and Holy Spirit of
God in them, is not only written in scripture, but in the whole state and frame
of nature, and of every life in this world; for every perfect fruit openly
declares, that it can have no goodness in it, till the light and spirit of this
world has done that to it and in it, which the Light and Spirit of God must do
to the soul of man, and therefore is a full proof, that it is absolutely
necessary for every human creature to desire, believe, and receive the birth of
the Son and Holy Spirit of God to save it from its own wrath and darkness, as
it is necessary for every fruit of the earth to be raised and regenerated from
its own bitterness and sourness, by receiving the light and spirit of this
world into it.
[App-1-85] 25. Some learned men, willing to discover the image of the Holy
Trinity in the creation, have observed three properties both in body and
spirit, which they supposed to be a proper likeness of the Trinity. But all
this is nothing to the matter.
[App-1-86] For as the Holy Trinity is a threefold life in God, so the image of
the Trinity is only found in a threefold life in the creature; for it is the
whole birth, or generation of the thing itself, whether it be corporeal or
spiritual, that stands in such a threefold state as the Holy Trinity doth, that
is the proper likeness or image of the Trinity. As there is one infinitely
perfect Deity, because this one Deity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so every
creature that is an original production of the Deity, or in its proper state of
perfection, stands in its whole being, or generating as the Deity doth, and
neither hath, nor ever can have any perfection, but because the triune nature
of God is manifested and brought forth in it; for perfection of life is God,
and a perfection of life derived from God, must stand in the same threefold
state, and that which is a life from the Deity, must have a life of the Trinity
in it.
[App-1-87] 26. Take away attraction, or desire from the creature of this
world, and you annihilate the creature; for where there is no attraction or
desire, there can be no nature or being; and therefore attraction or desire
shows the work of the creator in everything, or what is meant by the divine
fiat, or creating power. Now, what is it which this attraction or desire
wants, hungers, draws and reaches after? Nothing else but the light and spirit
of this world. What is the true, deep, and infallible ground of this? Why
does this desire thus work in every life of this world? It is because the
eternal will in the Deity, is a desiring or generating the Son, from whence the
Holy Spirit of God proceeds: and therefore attraction, which is an outbirth of
the divine desire, stands in a perpetual desiring of the light and spirit of
this world, because they are the two outbirths of the Light and Holy Spirit of
God. What rational mind can help being charmed with this wonderful harmony and
relation betwixt God, nature, and creature?
[App-1-88] 27. And now, my dear reader, if you are either Arian, or Deist, be
so no longer: the ground is dug up from under you, and neither opinion has
anything left to stand upon; you may wrangle and wrest the doctrine of
scripture, because it is only taught in words; but the veil is now taken off
from nature, and every plant and fruit will teach you with the clearness of a
noonday sun, these two great truths; first, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
are one being, one life, one God: secondly, that the soul, which is dead to the
paradisaical life, must be made alive again by the birth of the Son and Holy
Spirit of God in it, in the same manner as a dead seed is, and only can be
brought to life in this world, by the light and spirit of this world.
[App-1-89] If you are an Arian, don't content yourself with the numbers that
are with you, or with a learned name or two that are on your side: Arianism has
never yet been recommended by the genius and learning of a Baronious, or
Bellarmin; and nothing but a poor, groping, purblind philosophy, that is not
able to look either at God, nature, or creature, hath ever led any man into it:
for it is a truth proclaimed by all nature and creature, that there is a
threefold life in God, and everything that is, whether it be happy, or
miserable, perfect or imperfect, is only so, because it has, or has not the
triune nature of God in it.
[App-1-90] A beginning fruit is like a poison; a seed, for a while, is shut up
in a hard death. Why are they both at first in this state? It is because each
of them stands as yet only in that first birth of nature, which is but a
beginning manifestation of the Deity. Let the light of the sun, and the spirit
of this world be born in them, and then the sour, astringent fruit, and the
dead seed becomes a perfect, vegetable life, and is in its kind perfect, for
this one only reason, because the triune life of the Deity is truly manifested
in it.
[App-1-91] 28. If you are a Deist, made so, either by the disorderly state of
your own heart, or by prejudices taken from the corruptions and divisions of
Christians, or from a dislike of the language of scripture, or from an opinion
of the sufficiency of a religion of human reason, or from whatever else it may
be, look well to yourself, Christianity is no fiction of enthusiasm, or
invention of priests.
[App-1-92] If you can show, that the gospel proposes to bring men into the
kingdom of heaven by any other method, than that, which nature requires to make
any creature a living member of this world, then I will acknowledge the gospel
not to be founded in nature.
[App-1-93] But if what the gospel saith of the absolute necessity, that the
fallen soul be born again of the Son and Holy Spirit of God, is the very same
which all temporal nature saith of everything that is to enter into the life of
this world, viz., that it cannot partake of the life of this world, till the
light and spirit of this world is born in it; then does not all nature in this
world, and every life in it, declare, that the Christian method of salvation is
as necessary to raise fallen man, as the sun and spirit of this world is, to
bring a creature alive into it?
[App-1-94] Now, as there is but one God, so there is but one nature, as
unalterable as that God from whom it arises, and whose manifestation it is; so
also there is but one religion founded in nature, and but one salvation
possible in nature. Revealed religion is nothing else but a revelation of the
mysteries of nature, for God cannot reveal, or require anything by a spoken or
written word, but that which he reveals and requires by nature; for nature is
his great book of revelation, and he that can only read its capital letters,
will have found so many demonstrations of the truth of the written revelation
of God. {Spirit of Love, Part II, pages 134-149.}
[App-1-95] But to show, that there is but one salvation possible in nature, and
that possibility solely contained in the Christian method: look from the top to
the bottom of all creatures, from the highest to the lowest beings, and you
will find, that death has but one nature in all worlds, and in all creatures:
look at life in an angel, and life in a vegetable, and you will find, that life
has but one and the same form, one and the same ground in the whole scale of
beings: no omnipotence of God can make that to be life, which is not life, or
that to be death, which is not death, according to nature; and the reason is,
because nature is nothing else but God's own outward manifestation of what he
inwardly is, and can do; and therefore no revelation from God can teach, or
require anything but that which is taught and required by God in, and through
nature. The mysteries of religion therefore, are no higher, nor deeper than
the mysteries of nature, and all the rites, laws, ceremonies, types,
institutions and ordinances given by God from Adam to the apostles, are only
typical of something that is to be done, or instrumental to the doing of that,
which the unchangeable working of nature requires to be done. As sure
therefore as there is but one and the same thing that is death, and one and the
same thing that is life throughout all nature, whether temporal or eternal, so
sure is it, that there is but one way to life or salvation for fallen man. And
this way, let it be what it will, must and can be only that, which has its
reason and foundation in that one universal nature, which is the one
unchangeable manifestation of the Deity. For if there is but one thing that is
life, and one thing that is death throughout all nature, from the highest angel
to the hardest flint upon earth, then it must be plain, that the life which is
to be raised or restored by religion, must, and can only be restored according
to nature: and therefore, true religion can only be the religion of nature, and
divine revelation can do nothing else, but reveal and manifest the demands and
workings of nature.
[App-1-96] 29. Now, the one great doctrine of the Christian religion and which
includes all the rest, is this, that Adam, by his sin, died to the kingdom of
heaven, or that the divine life extinguished within him; that he cannot be
redeemed, or restored to this first divine life, but by having it kindled or
regenerated in him by the Son and Holy Spirit of God: now, that which is here
called death, his losing the Light and Spirit of the kingdom of heaven, and
that which is here made necessary to make him alive again to the kingdom of
heaven, is that very same which is called, and is death and life throughout all
nature, both temporal and eternal: and therefore, the Christian religion
requiring this method of raising man to a divine life, has its infallible proof
from all nature. {Spirit of Love, Part II, page 117, &c.} Consider death,
or the deadness that is in a hard flint, and you will see what is the eternal
death of a fallen angel: the flint is dead, or in a state of death, because its
fire is bound, compacted, shut up, and imprisoned; this is its chains and bands
of death: a steel struck against a flint will show you, that every particle of
the flint consists of this compacted fire.
[App-1-97] Now, a fallen angel is in no other state of death, knows no other
death than this: it is in its whole spiritual, intelligent being, nothing else,
but that very same which the flint is, in its insensible materiality, viz., an
imprisoned compacted, darkened fire-spirit, shut up, and tied in its own chains
of darkness, as the fire of the flint; and you shall see by and by, that the
flint is changed from its first state into its present hardness of death, in
the same manner, and by the same means, as the heavenly angel is become a fiery
serpent in the state of eternal death.
[App-1-98] Now, look at every death that can be found betwixt that of a fallen
angel, and that of a hard flint, and you will find that death enters nowhere,
into no kind of vegetable, plant, or animal, but as it has entered into the
angel, and the flint, and stands in the same manner in everything wherever it
is.
[App-1-99] Now, that a fallen angel, is nothing else but a fire-spirit
imprisoned in the same manner as a flint is an imprisoned fire, is plain from
the scripture account of them; not only because all the wrathful properties of
a fire without light, are ascribed to them as their essential qualities, but
because the place of their habitation, or the state of their life, is a fire of
hell. For how could it be possible, that a hellish fire should be the eternal
state of their life, unless their nature was such a fire? Must not their
painful condition arise from their nature, and their misery be only a
sensibility of themselves, of that which they have made themselves to be?
Therefore, if fire shut up in darkness, is the nature of hell, it can only be
so, because such a darkened fire is the very nature of a fallen angel. Or how
again could the human soul, which has withstood its salvation in this life, be
said to fall into eternal death, or the fire of hell, if the soul itself did
not become that fire of hell? For when you say the soul enters into hell, you
say neither more nor less, than if you had said, that hell enters into the
soul; therefore, the state of hell, and the state of the soul in hell, is one
and the same thing. If therefore hell is a state of fire shut up, and
imprisoned from all communion with light, then the same dark, imprisoned fire
must be the nature of the fallen angel and lost soul; and thus, what your eyes
see to be the death or deadness of a flint, is that same thing, or that same
state of the thing, which the scripture assures you, to be the eternal death of
a fallen angel, and a lost soul. Here also you may see a plain proof of what I
have elsewhere declared in it, or the in-spoken Word of life given to Adam at
his fall, it is in itself, as a fallen soul, the same dark, fiery spirit, as
the devils are; and that the reason why men wholly given up to wickedness, and
who have suppressed the redeeming power of God in their souls, do not become
fully sensible of this state of their souls, is this, because the soul, while
it is in this flesh and blood, is capable of being softened, assuaged, and
comforted in some degree or other, by the influences of the sun and spirit of
this world, as all other creatures and beings are. And if it was not thus, how
could it be a plain, constant doctrine of scripture, that when the unredeemed
soul departs this life, it is incapable of anything but hell? Is not this
directly saying, that hell, or the sensibility of hell was only hid and
suppressed in such a soul, by the life and light of this world shining upon it.
[App-1-100] Now what I have said of the sad condition of the soul at the fall,
that it lost the divine life, or the birth of the Son and Holy Spirit of God in
it, and so became the same dark, fiery nature, as the devils, is not possible
to be denied, without denying the most universally received doctrine of
scripture.
[App-1-101] Is it not a fundamental doctrine of scripture, that Adam and all
his posterity had been left in a state of eternal death, or damnation, unless
Jesus Christ had become their redeemer, and taken them out of their natural
state? But how can you believe, or own they had been left in this state,
without believing and owning that they were in it? Or, how can you with the
scripture believe, that by the fall they became heirs of eternal death and
damnation with the devils, unless you believe and affirm, that by the fall they
became of a hellish, diabolical nature? Or how can you hold, that by the fall
they wanted to be delivered from the state of the devils, and yet not allow,
that by the fall, they got the nature of the devils? Can anything be more
absurd and inconsistent? Is it not the same thing as saying, that God made
them heirs of eternal death and hell, before they were by nature fit for it, or
before they had extinguished in themselves the divine life which was at first
brought forth in them.
[App-1-102] Again: it is a scripture doctrine of the utmost certainty and
importance, that those souls which have totally resisted and withstood all that
God has done in them and for them by his Son Jesus Christ, will, at their
departure from the body, be incapable of anything but eternal death, or a
hellish condition. Now, how can you possibly hold this doctrine of scripture,
without holding at the same time, that the soul was in that state by the fall,
before it had received its redeemer, as it is then in, when it has refused to
receive him; for all that you can say of a lost soul is only this, that it has
lost its redeemer, and therefore is only in the condition of that soul which
has not received him: and therefore, if a lost soul is only an unredeemed soul,
it must be plain, that the soul, before it had received its redeemer, was in
the miserable condition, and had the miserable nature of a lost soul; and
therefore, the only difference between the fallen soul, and the lost soul is
this, they are both in the same need of a savior, both have the same miserable
nature, because they have him not; but the one has the offer of him, and the
other has refused to accept of him: but this final refusal of him, has only
left him in possession of that fallen state of a hellish condition, which it
had before a savior was given to it; and therefore, it is a truth of the utmost
certainty, that Adam, by his fall, died to the divine life, and that by this
death, his soul became of the same nature and condition with the fallen angels;
and that therefore that new birth or regeneration, which he is to obtain by his
redeemer Jesus Christ, is nothing else but the bringing back his soul into the
kingdom of heaven, by a birth of the Son and the Holy Spirit of God brought
forth in it, that so the life of the triune God may be in him again, as it was
at his creation, when his soul was first breathed forth from the triune God.
Is there anything more great, more glorious, or more consistent than these
truths? Or is there any possibility of denying any part of them, without
giving up the whole? Or is there any reason, why a Christian should be loath to
believe this, and this alone, to be the true state of that regeneration which
is so absolutely required by the gospel? Is it an unreasonable or
uncomfortable thing to be told, that our regeneration is a true and real
regaining that heavenly, divine, immortal life which at first came forth from
God, and which alone can enter into the kingdom of heaven?
[App-1-103] Say that Adam did not die a real death at his transgression, that
he did not lose a divine, immortal life, light and spirit, that he did not then
first become a mere earthly, mortal, diabolical animal in the true and proper
sense of the words, but that these things could only be affirmed of him in a
figurative form of speech; say this, and then tell me what reality you have
left in any article of our salvation?
[App-1-104] But if all these things must be said of fallen man according to the
strictest truth of the expression, then the gospel regeneration, by a birth of
the Son and Holy Spirit of God, arising a second time, in the soul of man, must
mean such a real birth of a new heavenly life, as the proper sense of the words
denote.
[App-1-105] 30. But to return now to my argumentation with the Deist.
[App-1-106] I have plainly shown you, that there is, and can be but one kind of
death through all nature, whether temporal or eternal; and this I have done, by
showing that eternal death in an angel, is the same thing, and has the same
nature, as the hard death that is in a senseless flint. But if it be a certain
truth, that death has but one way of entering into, or possessing any being
from the highest of spiritual to the lowest of material creatures, then, though
nothing else could be offered, it must be an infallible consequence, that life
has but one way of being kindled throughout all nature, and that therefore
there can be but one true religion, and that only can be it, which hath the one
only way of kindling the heavenly life in the soul.
[App-1-107] Now, look where you will, the birth or kindling of life through all
nature shows you, that the way of gospel regeneration, or raising the divine
life again in the fallen soul, is that one and the same way, by which every
kind of life is, and must be raised, wherever it is found. The gospel saith,
unless the fallen soul be born again from above, be born again of the Word, or
Son, and the Spirit of God, it cannot see, or enter into the kingdom of heaven:
now here it says a truth, as much confirmed and ratified by all nature, as when
it is said, except a creature hath the light and spirit of this world born in
it, it cannot become a living animal or this world: or, except a seed have the
light and spirit of this world incorporated in it, it cannot become a vegetable
of this world, either as plant, fruit, or flower. Ask now wherein lies the
absolute impossibility, that the fallen soul should be raised to its divine
life, without a birth of the Son and Holy Spirit of God in it, and the true
ground of this impossibility is only this, because a seed shut up in its own
cold hardness, cannot possibly be raised into its highest vegetable life, but
by a birth of the light and spirit of this world rising up in it.
[App-1-108] On the other hand, ask why a seed cannot possibly become a
vegetable life, till the light and spirit of this world has been incorporated,
or generated in it; and the only true ground of it is, because a fallen soul
can only be raised to a divine life, or become a plant of the kingdom of
heaven, by receiving the birth of the Light and Spirit of God into it. For the
true reason, why life is in such a form, and rises in such a manner in the
lowest creature living, is because it does, and must arise in the same manner,
and stand in the same form in the highest of living creatures: for nature does,
and must always act and generate in one and the same unchangeable manner,
because it is nothing else but the manifestation of one unchangeable God.
[App-1-109] It is one and the same operation of light and spirit, that turns
fire into every degree and kind of life that can be found either in temporal or
eternal nature: it is one and the same operation of light and spirit, that upon
one state of fire, raises an animal life, upon another state of fire, raises an
intellectual and angelical life.
[App-1-110] There is no state or form of death in any creature, but where some
kind of fire is shut up from light and spirit, nor is there any kind of life
but what is kindled by the same operation of light and spirit upon some sort of
fire.
[App-1-111] A fruit must first stand in a poisonous, sour, astringent, bitter,
and fiery agitation of all its parts, before the light and spirit of this world
can be generated in it. And thus light and spirit operate upon one sort of
fire in the production of a vegetable life.
[App-1-112] An animal must be conceived in the same manner, it must begin in
the same poison, and when nature is in its fiery strife, the light and spirit
of this world kindles up the true animal life.
[App-1-113] Thus also there is but one kind, or state of death that can fall
upon any creature, which is nothing else, but its losing the birth of light and
spirit in itself, by which it becomes an imprisoned, dark fire. In an animal,
vegetable, or mere matter, it is a senseless state of imprisoned fire; in an
angel, or intellectual being, as the soul of man, it is a self- tormenting,
self-generating, fiery worm, that cannot lose its sensibility, but is in a
state of eternal death, because it is separated eternally from that light and
spirit, which alone can raise a divine life in any intellectual creature.
[App-1-114] And thus it is plain, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there
is neither life nor death to be found in any part of the creation but what sets
its infallible seal to this gospel truth, that fallen man cannot enter into the
kingdom of heaven any other way, than by being born again of the Son and Holy
Spirit of God.
[App-1-115] 31. And here, my friend, you may with certainty see what a poor,
groundless fiction, your religion of human reason is; its insignificancy and
emptiness is shown you by everything you can look upon.
[App-1-116] Salvation is a birth of life, but reason can no more bring forth
this birth, than it can kindle life in a plant, or animal: you might as well
write the word "flame," upon the outside of a flint, and then expect that its
imprisoned fire should be kindled by it, as to imagine, that any images, or
ideal speculations of reason painted in your brain, should raise your soul out
of its state of death, and kindle the divine life in it. No: would you have
fire from a flint; its house of death must be shaken, and its chains of
darkness broken off by the strokes of a steel upon it. This must of all
necessity be done to your soul, its imprisoned fire must be awakened by the
sharp strokes of steel, or no true light of life can arise in it: all nature
and creature tells you, that the heavenly life must begin in you from the same
causes, and the same operation as every earthly life, whether vegetable, or
animal, does in this world. {Way to Divine Knowledge, page 162. &c.}
[App-1-117] Now, look where you will, all life must be generated in this
manner: first, an attraction, or an astringing desire, must work itself into an
anguishing agitation, or painful strife; this attraction become restless, and
highly agitated, is that first poison, or strife of the properties of nature,
which is and must be the beginning of every vegetable or animal life; it is by
this strife, or inward agitation, that it reaches and gets a birth of the light
and spirit of this world into it, and so becomes a living member, either of the
animal or vegetable world.
[App-1-118] Now, this must be your process, a desire brought into an anguishing
state; or the bitter sorrows and fiery agitations of repentance, must be the
beginning of a divine life in your soul; 'tis by this awakened fire, or inward
agitation, that it becomes capable of being regenerated, or turned into an
heavenly life, by the Light and Holy Spirit of God.
[App-1-119] Nothing is, or can possibly be salvation, but this regenerated life
of the soul: how vain and absurd would it be, to talk of a creature's being
made a member of a vegetable or animal kingdom, through an outward grace or
favor? or by any outward thing of any kind? For does not sense, reason, and
all nature force you to confess, that it is absolutely impossible for anything
to become a living member of the animal or vegetable kingdom, but by having the
animal or vegetable life raised or brought forth in it? Therefore, does not
sense and reason, and all nature join with the gospel in affirming, that no man
can enter into the kingdom of heaven, till the heavenly life, or that which is
the life in heaven, be born in him?
[App-1-120] The gospel says to the fallen, earthly man, that he must be born
again from above, before he can see, enter into, or become a living member of
the kingdom that is above.
[App-1-121] Now, he that understands this to be a figurative saying, that
requires no real birth of a real life that is only above, but that an earthly
man may enter into the life of heaven, by only carrying this figurative saying
along with him, is as absurd, as ignorant, and offends as much against sense,
reason, and all nature, as he who holds, that it is a figurative expression,
when we say that nothing can enter into the vegetable kingdom, till it has the
vegetable life in it, or be a member of the animal kingdom, till it hath the
animal life born in it. {Way to Divine Knowledge, page 159.}
[App-1-122] And if some learned men will say, that it is religious enthusiasm
to place our salvation, or capacity for the kingdom of heaven in the inward
life or birth of heaven derived into our souls, they are only as learned as
those who should call it philosophical enthusiasm to place the true nature of a
vegetable, or animal, in its getting the inward, real birth of a vegetable and
animal life. But to return to the Deist.
[App-1-123] You act as if God was a being that had an arbitrary, discretionary
will, or wisdom, like that of a great prince over his subjects, who will reward
mankind according as their services appeared to him. And so you fancy, that
your religion of reason may appear as valuable as a religion that consists of
forms, and modes, ordinances, and doctrines of revelation; but your idea of the
last judgment is a fiction of reason that knows nothing rightly of God. God's
last rewarding, is only his last separating everything into its own eternal
place; it is only putting an end to all temporary nature, to the mixture of
good and evil that is in time and leaving everything to be that in eternity,
which it has made itself to be in time. Thus it is that our works follow us,
and thus God rewards every man according to his deeds. {Way to Divine
Knowledge, pages 169-183.}
[App-1-124] During the time of this world, God may be considered as the good
husbandman; he sows the seed, the end of the world is the harvest, the angels
are the reapers; if you are wheat, you are to be gathered into the barn, if you
are tares, it signifies nothing, whence, or how, or by what means you are
become so; tares are to be rejected, because they are tares, and wheat is to be
gathered by the angels, because it is wheat: this is the mercy, and goodness,
and discretionary justice of God that you are to expect at the last day. If
you are not wheat, that is, if the heavenly life, or the kingdom of God, is not
grown up in you it signifies nothing what you have chosen in the stead of it,
or why you have chosen it, you are not that, which alone can help you to a
place in the divine granary.
[App-1-125] God wants no services of men to reward, he only wants to have such
a life quickened and raised up in you, as may make it possible for you to enter
into, and live in heaven.
[App-1-126] He has created you out of his own eternal nature, and therefore you
must have either an eternal life, or eternal death according to it. If eternal
nature standeth in you, as it doth without you, then you are born again to the
kingdom of heaven; but if nature works contrary in you to what it does in
heaven, then you are in eternal death: and here lies the necessity of our being
born again of the Word and Spirit of God, in order to the kingdom of heaven.
It is because we are created out of that eternal nature which is the kingdom of
heaven; 'tis because we are fallen out of it into a life of temporal nature,
and therefore must have the life of eternal nature re-kindled in us, before we
can possibly enter into the kingdom of heaven: therefore, look where you will,
or at what you will, there is only one thing to be done, we want nothing else,
but to have the light world, or the life of eternal nature kindled again in our
souls, that life, and light, and spirit may be that in our souls, which they
are in eternal nature, out of which our souls were created; that so we may be
heavenly plants growing up to the kingdom of heaven. {Way to Divine Knowledge,
pages 186-195.}
[App-1-127] You deceive yourself with fancied notions of the goodness of God;
you imagine, that so perfect a being cannot damn you for so small a matter, as
choosing a religion according to your own notions, or for not joining yourself
with this, or that religious society.
[App-1-128] But all this is great ignorance of God, and nature, and religion.
God has appointed a religion, by which salvation is to be had according to the
possibility of nature, where no creature will be saved, or lost, but as it
works with, or contrary to nature. For as the God of nature cannot himself act
contrary to nature, because nature is the manifestation of himself, so every
creature having its life in, and from nature, can have only such a life, or
such a death as is according to the possibility of nature: and therefore, no
creature will be saved, by an arbitrary goodness of God, but because of its
conformity to nature, nor any creature lost by a want of compassion in God, but
because of its salvation being impossible, according to the whole state of
nature.
[App-1-129] It is not for notional, or speculative mistakes, that man will be
rejected by God at the last day, or for any crimes that God could overlook, if
he was so pleased; but because man has continued in his unregenerate state, and
has resisted and suppressed that birth of life, by which alone he could become
a member of the kingdom of heaven. The goodness and love of God have no limits
or bounds, but such as his omnipotence hath: and everything that hath a
possibility of partaking of the kingdom of heaven, will infallibly find a place
in it.
[App-1-130] God comes not to judgment to display any wrath of his own, or to
inflict any punishment as from himself upon man: he only comes to declare, that
all temporary nature is at an end, and that therefore, all things must be, and
stand in their own places in eternal nature: his sentence of condemnation, is
only a leaving them that are lost, in such a misery of their own nature, as has
finally rejected all that was possible to relieve it.
[App-1-131] You fancy that God will not reject you at the last day, for having
not received this, or that mode, or kind of religion: but here all is mistake
again. You might as well imagine, that no particular kind of element was
necessary to extinguish fire, or that water can supply the place of air in
kindling it, as suppose that no particular kind of religion is absolutely
necessary to raise up such a divine life in the soul as can only be its
salvation; for nature is the ground of all creatures, it is God's manifestation
of himself, it is his instrument in, and by which he acts in the production and
government of every life; and therefore a life that is to belong to this world,
must be raised according to temporal nature, and a life that is to live in the
next world, must be raised according to eternal nature.
[App-1-132] Therefore, all the particular doctrines, institutions, mysteries,
and ordinances of a revealed religion that comes from the God of nature, must
have their reason, foundation, and necessity in nature; and then your
renouncing such a revealed religion, is renouncing all that the God of nature
can do to save you.
[App-1-133] When I speak of nature as the true ground and foundation of
religion, I mean nothing like that which you call the religion of human reason,
or nature; for I speak here of eternal nature, which is the nature of the
kingdom of heaven, or that eternal state, where all redeemed souls must have
their eternal life, and live in eternal nature by a life derived from it, as
men and animals live in temporal nature, by a life derived from it; for, seeing
man stands with his soul in eternal nature, as certainly as he lives outwardly
in temporal nature, and seeing man can have nothing in this world, neither
happiness, nor misery from it, but what is according to the eternal nature of
that world; and therefore, it is an infallible truth, that that particular
religion can alone do us any good, or help us to the happiness of the next
world, which works with, and according to eternal nature, and is able to
generate that eternal life in us. But your notion of a goodness of God that
may be expected at the last day, is as groundless, as if you imagined, that God
would then stand over his creatures in a compassionate kind of weighing or
considering who should be saved, and who damned, because a good-natured prince
might do so towards variety of offenders.
[App-1-134] But hear how the God of nature himself speaks of this matter:
Behold, I have set before thee, life and death, fire and water. choose whither
thou wilt. Here lies the whole of the divine mercy; 'tis all on this side the
day of judgment: till the end of time, God is compassionate and long-suffering,
and continues to every creature a power of choosing life or death, water or
fire; but when the end of time is come, there is an end of choice, and the last
judgment is only a putting everyone into the full and sole possession of that
which he has chosen.
[App-1-135] But your notion of a goodness of God at the last day supposes, that
if a man has erroneously chosen death instead of life, fire instead of water,
that God will not suffer such a creature to be deprived of salvation through a
mistaken choice; but that in such a creature, he will make death to be life,
and fire to be water. But you might as well expect that God should make a
thing to be, and not to be at the same time; for this is as possible as to make
hell to be heaven, or death to be life: for darkness can no more be light,
death can no more be life, fire can no more be water in any being through a
compassion of God towards it, than a circle could be a square, a falsehood a
truth, or two to be more than three, by God's looking upon them.
[App-1-136] 32. Our salvation is an entrance into the kingdom of heaven: now,
the life, Light and Spirit of heaven must as necessarily be in a creature
before it can live in heaven, as the life, light and spirit of this world must
be in a creature before it can live in this world: therefore the one only
religion that can save any one son of fallen Adam, must be that which can
raise, or regenerate the life, Light and Spirit of heaven in his soul, that
when the light and spirit of this world leaves him, he may not find himself in
eternal death and darkness.
[App-1-137] Now if this Light and Spirit of heaven is generated in your soul as
it is generated in heaven, if it arises up in your nature within you, as it
does in eternal nature without you, (which is the Christian new birth, or
regeneration) then you are become capable of the kingdom of heaven, and nothing
can keep you out of it; but if you die without this birth of the eternal Light
and Spirit of God, then your soul stands in the same distance from, and
contrariety to the kingdom of heaven, as hell does: if you die in this
unregenerate state, it signifies nothing how you have lived, or what religion
you have owned, all is left undone that was to have saved you: it matters not
what form of life you have appeared in, what a number of decent, engaging or
glorious exploits you have done either as a scholar, a statesman, or a
philosopher; if they have proceeded only from the light and spirit of this
world, they must die with it, and leave your soul in that eternal darkness,
which it must have, so long as the Light and Spirit of eternity is not
generated in it.
[App-1-138] And this is the true ground and reason, why an outward morality, a
decency and beauty of life and conduct with respect to this world, arising only
from a worldly spirit, has nothing of salvation in it: he that has his virtue
only from this world, is only a trader of this world, and can only have a
worldly benefit from it. For it is an undoubted truth, that everything is
necessarily bounded by, or kept within the sphere of its own activity; and
therefore, to expect heavenly effects from a worldly spirit, is nonsense: as
water cannot rise higher in its streams, than the spring from whence it cometh,
so no actions can ascend further in their efficacy, or rise higher in their
value, than the spirit from whence they proceed. The spirit that comes from
heaven is always in heaven, and whatsoever it does, tends to, and reaches
heaven: the spirit that arises from this world, is always in it; it is as
worldly when it give alms, or prays in the church, as when it makes bargains in
the market. When therefore the gospel saith, he that gives alms to be seen of
men, hath his reward; it is grounded on this general truth, that everything,
every shape, or kind or degree of virtue that arises from the spirit of this
world, has nothing to expect but that which it can receive from this world: for
every action must have its nature, and efficacy according to the spirit from
whence it proceeds. He that loves to see a crucifix, a worthless image, solely
from this principle, because from his heart he embraces Christ as his suffering
Lord and pattern, does an action poor, and needless in itself, which yet by the
spirit from whence it proceeds, reaches heaven, and helps to kindle the
heavenly life in the soul. On the other hand, he that from a selfish heart, a
worldly spirit, a love of esteem, distinguishes himself by the most rational
virtues of an exemplary life, has only a piety that may be reckoned amongst the
perishable things of this world.
[App-1-139] 33. You (the Deist) think it a partiality unworthy of God, when
you hear that the salvation of mankind is attributed and appropriated to faith
and prayer in the Name of Jesus Christ. It must be answered, first, that there
is no partiality of any kind in God; everything is accepted by him according to
its own nature, and receives all the good from him that it can possibly
receive: secondly, that a morality of life, not arising from the power and
Spirit of Jesus Christ, but brought forth by the spirit of this world, is the
same thing, has the same nature and efficacy in a heathen, as a Christian, does
only the same worldly good to the one, as it does to the other; therefore,
there is not the least partiality in God, with respect to the moral works of
mankind, considered as arising from, and directed by the spirit of this world.
[App-1-140] Now, were these the only works that man could do, could he only act
from the spirit of this world, no flesh could be saved, that is, no earthly
creature, such as man is, could possibly begin to be of a heavenly nature, or
have a heavenly life brought forth in him; so it is only a Spirit from heaven
derived into the fallen nature, that makes any beginning of a heavenly life in
it, that can lay the possibility of its having the least ability, tendency, and
disposition towards the kingdom of heaven. This Spirit derived from heaven, is
the birth of the Son of God, given to the soul as its savior, regenerator, or
beginner of its return to heaven; it is that Word of life, or bruiser of the
serpent, that was inspoken into the first fallen father of men; 'tis this alone
that gives to all the race of Adam their capacity for salvation, their power of
being again sons of God; and therefore, faith and prayer in the Name of Jesus
Christ, or works done in the Spirit and power of Jesus Christ can alone save
the soul, because the soul can have no relation to heaven, no communion with
it, no beginning or power of growth in the heavenly life, but solely by the
nature and Name of Jesus Christ derived into it. God's redemption of mankind
is as universal as the fall: it was the one father of all men that fell,
therefore, all his children were born into his fallen state: it was the one
father of all men that was redeemed by the inspoken Word of life into him;
therefore, all his children are born into his state of redemption, and have as
certainly the same bruiser of the serpent in the birth of their life from him,
as they have from him a serpentine nature that is to be bruised.
[App-1-141] Hence it was, that this bruiser of the serpent, when born of a
virgin, and come to die for the world, saith of himself,"I am the way, the
truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me." Hence also the
apostle saith, "There is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we
must be saved," because he is that same saving Name, or power of salvation
which from the beginning was given to Adam, as an inspoken Word of life, or
bruiser of the serpent: and therefore, as sure as Adam had any power of
salvation derived into him from Jesus Christ, so sure was it, that the apostle
must tell both Jews and heathens, that there was no salvation in any other.
[App-1-142] Therefore, though Jesus Christ is the one only savior of all that
can anywhere, or at any time be saved, yet there is no partiality in God,
because, this same Jesus Christ, who came in human flesh to the Jews in a
certain age, was that same savior who was given to Adam, when all mankind were
in his loins; and who, through all ages, and in all countries, from the first
patriarchs to the end of the world, is the common savior, as he is the common
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and that principle of
life both in Jews and heathens, by which they had any relation to God, or any
power, or right, or ability to call him Father. When therefore you look upon
the gospel as narrowing the way of salvation, or limiting it to those, who only
know and believe in Jesus Christ, since his appearance in the flesh, you
mistake the whole nature of the Christian redemption.
[App-1-143] And when you reject this savior that then appeared, and died as a
sacrifice upon the cross, you don't renounce a particular kind of religion,
that was given only at a certain time to one part of the world, but you
renounce the one source and foundation of all the grace and mercy that God can
bestow upon mankind, you renounce your share of that first covenant which God
made with all men in Adam, you go back into his first fallen state, and so put
yourself into that condition of eternal death, from which there is no
possibility of deliverance, but by that one savior whom you have renounced.
[App-1-144] And now, my dear friend, beware of prejudice, or hardness of heart:
one careless, or one relenting thought upon all that is here laid before you,
may either quite shut out, or quite open an entrance for true conviction. I
have shown you what is meant by Christian redemption, and the absolute
necessity of a new and heavenly birth, in order to obtain your share of a
heavenly life in the next world: I have confirmed the truths of the gospel, by
proofs taken from what is undeniable in nature: and I readily grant you that
nothing can be true in revealed religion, but what has its foundation in
nature; because a religion coming from the God of nature, can have no other end
but to reform, and set right the failings, transgressions, and violations of
nature. When the gospel saith that man fallen from the state of his creation,
and become an earthly animal of this temporal world, must be born again of the
Son and Holy Spirit of God, in order to be a heavenly creature; 'tis because
all nature saith, that an immortal, eternal soul, must have an immortal,
eternal Light and Spirit, to make it live in eternal nature, as every animal
must have a temporal light and spirit, in order to live in temporary nature.
Must you not therefore either deny the immortality of the soul, or acknowledge
the necessity of its having an eternal Light and Spirit? When the gospel
saith, that nothing can kindle or generate the heavenly life, but the operation
of the Light and Spirit of heaven, it is because all nature saith, that no
temporal life can be raised but in the same manner in temporary nature. Must
you not therefore be forced to confess, that nature and the gospel both preach
the same truths.
[App-1-145] Light and spirit must be wherever there are living beings: and
there must be the same difference betwixt the light and spirit of different
worlds, as there is betwixt the worlds themselves. Hell must have its light,
or it could have no living inhabitants, but its light is not so refreshing, not
so gentle, not so lightful, not so comfortable as flashing points of fire in
the thickest darkness of night; and therefore their light is called an eternal
darkness, because it can never disperse, but only horribly discover darkness:
hell also must have its spirit; but it is only an incessant insensibility of
wrathful agitations, of which the thunder and rage of a tempest is but a low,
shadowy resemblance, as being only a little outward eruption of that wrath,
which is the inward, restless essence of the spirit of hell; and therefore that
life, though it be a living spirit, is justly called an eternal death.
[App-1-146] The Light and Spirit of God admit of no delineation or comparison,
they are only so far known to anyone, as they are brought into the soul by a
birth of themselves in it.
[App-1-147] Now consider, I pray you: the light and spirit of this world can no
more be the light and spirit of immortal souls, than grass and hay can be the
food of angels; but is as different from the Light and Spirit of heaven, as an
angel is different from a beast of the field. When therefore the soul of a man
departs from his body, and is eternally cut off from all temporal light and
spirit, what is it that can keep such a soul from falling into eternal
darkness, unless it have in itself, that Light and Spirit, which is of the same
nature with the Light and Spirit of eternity, so that it may be in the light of
heaven or eternal nature, as it was in the light of this world in temporary