II. And as the difficulties of the subject are many, so many have been the interruptions and avocations I have met with, whilst it was under my hand : Which I mention for no other end but to procure a more favourable censure from you, if it appear less ex- act than you expected to find. Such as it is, I do with much respect and affection tender to your hands, humbly requesting the blessing of the Spirit may accompany it to your hearts. If you will but allow yourselves to think close to the matter before you, I doubt not but you may find somewhat in it apt both to inform your minds and quicken your affections. I know you have a mul- tiplicity of business under your hands, but yet I hope your great con- cern makes all others daily to give place ; and that how clamorous and importunate soever the affairs of the world be, you both can and do find time to sit alone, and bethink yourselves of a much more important business you have to do.
My friends, we are borderers upon eternity, we live upon the confines of the spiritual and immaterial world : we must shortly be associated with bodiless beings, and shall have, after a few days are past, no more concerns for meat, drink, and sleep, buying and sel- ling, habitations and relations, than the angels of God now have. Besides, we live here in a state of trial : Man, (as Scaliger fitly calls
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 479
him,) is utrimque rnendi nexus, One in whom both worlds do meet ; his body participates of the lower, his soul of the upper world ; hence it is that he finds such tugging and pulling this way and that way, upward and downward ; both worlds, as it were, contending for this invaluable prize, the precious soul. All Christ's ordinances are instituted, and his officers ordained for no other use or end but the salvation of souls. Books are valuable according to their con- ducibility to this end : how rich a reward of my labours shall I account it, if this treatise of the soul may but promote the sanctifi- cation and salvation of any reader's soul.
To your hands I first tender it : it becomes your property, not only as a debt of justice, the fulfilling of a promise made you long since, upon your joint and earnest desires for the publication of it ; but, as an acknowledgment of the many favours I have received from you : To one of you I stand obliged in the bond of relation, and under the sense of many kindnesses, beyond whatever such a degree of relation can be supposed to exact.
You have here a succinct account of the nature, faculties and original of the soul of man, as also of its infusion into the body by God, without intitling himself to the guilt and sin resulting from that their union.
You will also find the breath of your nostrils to be the nexus, tie, or bond, which holds our souls and bodies in personal union ; and that, whilst the due crasis and temperament of the body remains, and breath continues, your souls hang, as by a weak and slender thread, over the state of a vast eternity in heaven or in hell ; which will inform you both of the value of your breath, and the best way of improving it, whilst you enjoy it.
The immortality of the soul is here asserted, proved, and vindi- cated from the most considerable objections ; so that it will evident- ly appear to you, by this discourse, you do not cease to be, when you cease to breathe : and, seeing they will overlive all temporal enjoyments, they must necessarily perish as to all their joys, com- forts, and hopes, (which is all the death that can be incident to an immortal spirit,) if they be not in the proper season secured and provided of that never-perishing food of souls, God in Christ, their portion for ever.
Here you will find the grounds and reasons of that strong inclina- tion, which you all feel them to have to your bodies, and the ne- cessity notwithstanding that, of their divorce, and separation from their beloved bodies ; and that it would manifestly be to their pre- judice, if it should be otherwise: and to overcome the unreason- able aversations of believers, and to bring them to a more becoming cheerful submission to the laws of death, whensoever the writ «f
480 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
ejection shall be served upon them ; you will here find a represen- tation of that blessed life, comely order, and most delightful em- ployment of the incorporeal people inhabiting the city of God ; wherein, beside those sweet meditations which are proper to feast your hungry affections, you will meet with divers unusual, though not vain or unuseful, questions stated and resolved, which will be a grateful entertainment to your inquisitive and searching minds.
It is possible they mav be censured by some as underminable and unprofitable curiosities; but as I hate a presumptuous intrusion into unrevealed secrets, so I think it is a weakness to be discouraged in the search of truth, so far as it is fit to trace it, by such damping and causeless censures. Nor am I sensible I have in any thing transgressed the bounds of Christian sobriety, to gratify the palate of a nice and delicate reader. #
I have also here set before the reader an idea or representation of the state and case of damned souls, that, if it be the will of God, a seasonable discovery of hell may be the means of some men's re- covery out of the danger of it ; and close up the whole with a demonstration of the invaluable preciousness of souls, and the seve- ral dangerous snares and artifices of Satan, their professed enemy, to destroy and cast them away for ever.