The disaffectedness, and aversion of men to the study of their own souls, are the more to be admired ; not only because of the weight and necessity of it, but the alluring pleasure, and sweet- ness that are found therein. What * Cardan speaks, is experimen- tally felt by many, " That scarce any thing is more pleasant and " delectable to the soul of man, than to know what he is, what " he may and shall be ; and what those divine and supreme " things are, which he is to enjoy after death, and the vicissitudes " of this present world.11 For we are creatures conscious to our- selves of an immortal nature, and that we have something about us which must overlive this mortal flesh, and therefore it is ever and anon some way or other hinting and intimating to us its expecta- tions of, and designation for a better life than that it now lives in the body, and that we shall not cease to be, when we cease to breathe.
And certainly, my friends, discourses of the soul, and its im- mortality ; of heaven and of hell, the next, and only receptacles of unbodied spirits, were never more seasonable and necessary than in this atheistical age of the world, wherein all serious piety and thoughts of immortality are ridiculed, and hissed out of the com- pany of many : As if those old condemned Heretics, the ©i^a^u^/ra/, who asserted the corruptibility and mortality of the soul as well as the body, had been again revived in our days.
And as the Atheism of some, so the tepidity, and unconcerned carelessness of the most, need and call for such potent remedies, as discourses of this kind do plentifully afford. I dare appeal to your charitable judgments, whether the conversations and discourses of the many, do indeed look like a serious pursuit of heaven, and a fight from hell ?
Long have my thoughts bended towards this great and excellent subject, and many earnest desires I have had, (as I believe all think- ing persons must needs have) to know what I shall be when I breathe not. But when I had engaged my meditations about it, two great rubs opposed the farther progress of my thoughts therein : Namely,
I. The difficulty of the subject I had chosen : And,
II. The distractions of the times in which I was to write upon it.
* Quid j ucundius quam scire quid simus, quidj'uerimus, quid erimui, et cum his eticnu divina atque suyrema ilia post obitum mundique vicissiludines.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY- 477
I. As for the subject, such is the subtilty and sublimity of its nature, and such the knotty controversies in which it is involved, that it much better deserves that inscription, than Minerva's tem- ple at Sawn did, * " Never did any mortal reveal me plainly.
" It is but little that the most clear and sharp-sighted do discern " of their own souls, now in the state of composition ; and what can " we positively and distinctly know of the life they live in the state " of separation ? The darkness in which these things are involved " doth greatly exercise, even the greatest wits, and frequently " elude and frustrate the most generous attempts j\" Many great scholars whose natural and acquired abilities singularly furnished and qualified them to make a clearer discovery, have laboured in this field, asque ad sudorcm et pallorem, even to sweat and paleness, and done little more but entangle themselves, and the subject more than before ; this cannot but discourage new attempts.
And yet, without some knowledge of the hability, and subjective capacity of our souls to enjoy the good of the world to come, even in a state of absence from the body, a principal relief must be cut off from them, under the great and manifold trials they are to en- counter in this evil world.
As for myself, I assure you, I am deeply sensible of the inequali- ty of my shoulders to this burden ; and have often thought (since I undertook it) of that grave and necessary caution of the poetj, to wield and poise the burden as porters use to do, before I undertook it. Zuinglius blamed Carolostadius (as some may do me) for un- dertaking the controversy of that age; because, saith he, Non liabet satis humerorum ; his shoulders are too weak for it.
And yet I know men's labours prosper not according to the art and elegancy of the composure, but according to the divine blessing which pleaseth to accompany them. Rufnnus tells us of a learned philosopher at the Council of Nice, who stoutly defended his thesis against the greatest wits and scholars there, and yet was at last fair- ly vanquished by a man of no extraordinary parts : of which con- quest the philosopher gave this candid and ingenuous account ; — Against words (said he) I opposed words; and what was spoken lover*
* Tov s/iov tczxXov abzig tsu^v^TOc, a-Trsxec'Aw^sV.
f Artimam preesentemmentis acie vir, axtt nc vix quidern assequimur ; scd qualis sitfuturnx quomodo indagabimus ? Laborant hie maxima, ingenia, et calt'go eonatus etiam generosas- non raru cludit. Jos. Stern, de morte, cap. 20.
\ Sumite maleriam vestris, qui scribitis, cequavi,
Viribits : et versate diu, quidjvrrc rccusent,
tluid valeant humeri Horat. de arte po*t. T. 37.
V,\ amine well, ye writers, weigh with care
What suits your genius, what your strength can bear ;
For when a well-proportion'd theme you chuse,
Nor words nor method will their aid refuse.
478 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
threw by the art of speaking : But when, instead of words, power came out of the mouth of the speaker, words could no longer with- stand truth ; nor man oppose the power of God,
0 that my weak endeavours might prosper under the influence of the like Spirit, upon the hearts of them that shall read this in- artificial, but well-meant discourse.
1 am little concerned about the contempts and censures of fas- tidious readers. I have resolved to say nothing that exceeds so- briety, nor to provoke any man, except my dissent from his unproved dictates must be his provocation.
Perhaps there are some doubts and difficulties relating to this subject which will never fully be solved till we come to heaven. For man, by the fall, being less than himself, doth not understand himself, nor will ever perfectly do so until he be fully restored to himself; which will not be whilst he dwells in a body of sin and death. And yet it is to me past doubt, that this, as well as other subjects, might have been much more cleared than it is, if instead of the proud contending^ of masterly wits for victory, all had hum- bly fand peaceably applied themselves to the impartial search of truth.
Truth, like an orient pearl in the bottom of a river, would have discovered itself by its native lustre and radiancy, had not the feet of Heathen philosophers, cunning Atheists, and daring school divines disturbed and fouled the stream.