wonderfully made, I was curiously \vTought in the lowest parts of the earth." If the cabinet be so curioxisly ^\Tought, what is the jewel? how richly and gloriously is the soul embroidered! it is divinely inlaid and enam- elled. The body is but the sheath, Dan. vii. 15. "I wiis grieved in the midst of my body;" in the Chaldee it is, in the midst of my sheath. The most beautiful body is but like a velvet sheath, the soul is the blade of admirable metal. The soul is a sparkling diamond set in a ring of clay, &c. The soul is a vessel of honour; God himself is served in this vessel. The soul is the bird of paradise that soars aloft; it may be compared to the wings of the cherubims, it hath a winged iwiftness to fly to heaven. The soul is capable of communion with God and anjrels. The soul is God's house he hath made to dwell in, Heb. iii. 6. The understanding, will, and affections are the three stories in this house. What pity is it that this goodly building should be let out, and the devil become tenant in it. The preciousness of the soul is seen in two parti- culars.
It hath I. An intrinsical worth. II. An estimative worth.
I. The soul hath an intrinsical worth. Which appears in two things: 1. Spirituality. 2. Immortality.
1. Spirituality. The soul is a spiritual substance. It is a saying among the ancients, our souls are tempered in the same mortar with the heavenly spirits. Now the soul is spiritual three manner of ways: In its essence, object, operation.
(1.) The soul is spiritual in its essence. God breathed it in. Gen. ii. 7. It is a sparkle lighted by the breath of God. The soul may be compared to the spirits of the wine, the body to the dregs: the spirits are the more pure refined part of the wine, such is the soul; the body is more feculent, the soul is the more refined, sublimated part of man. Mistake me not, when I say the soul is spiritual, and that it is a beam of God; I do not mean that it is of the same substance with him, as Servetus, Osiander, and others have held; for when it is said God breathed mto man the breath of life, they erroneously
thought that the soul being infused did con- vey into man the spirit and substance of God, which opinion is absurd and sinful: tor if the soul should be part of the Divine essence, then it will follow, that the essence of God should be subject not only to change and passion, but which is worse, to sin, which were blasphemy to assert; so that when we say the soul is spiritual, the meaning is, God hath invested it with many noble en- dowments, he hath made it a mirror of beauty, and printed upon it a surpassing excellency; as the sun shining upon crystal, conveys its beauty, not its being.
(2.) The soul is spiritual in its object, it contemplates God and heaven; God is the orb and centre where the soul doth fix; if you could lift up a stone into the highest region, though it did break in a hundred pieces, it would fall to its centre. The soul moves to God, as to its rest, Psal. cxvi. 7. " Return to thy rest, O my soul." He is the ark to which this dove flies; nothing but God can fill a heaven-born soul ; if the earth were turned into a globe of gold, it could not fill the heart, it would still cry. Give, give. The soul being spiritual, God only can be the adequate object of it.
(3.) The soul is spiritual in its operation, it being immaterial, doth not depend upon the body in its working. The senses of seeing, hearing, and the rest of those organs of the body, cease and die with the body, because thej'^ are parts of the body, and have their dependence on it; but the soul (as Aristotle saith) hath a nature distinct from the body, it moves and operates of itself though the body be dead, and hath no dependence upon, or co-existence with the body. Thales Milesius, an ancient j)hiloso- pher, calls the soul a self-moveable, it hath an intrinsical principle of life and motion, though it be separate from the body. And thus you have seen the soul's spirituality.
2. The preciousness of the soul appears in its immortality. There are some that say the soul is mortal; indeed it were well for those who do not live like men, if they might die like beasts; but as Julius Scaliger well observes, it is impossible for any thing of a spiritual, uncompounded nature, to be subject to death and corruption: the souls of
PRECIOUSNESS OF THE SOUL.