To my understanding also belongs by conscience, a noble, divine, and awful power : By which I summon and judge myself, as at a solemn tribunal; bind and lose, condemn and acquit myself and actions, but still with an eye and respect to the judgment of God. Hence are my best comforts, and worst terrors.
This understanding of mine is the director and guide of my will, as the counsellor ; and my will is as the prince : It freely chuseth and refuseth, as my understanding directs and suggests to it. The members of my body, and the passions of my soul, are under its dominion : The former are under its absolute command, the latter under its suasions and insinuations, though not absolutely, yet always with effect and success.
And both my understanding and ivill I find to have great influ- ence upon my affections.
These passions and affections of my soul are of great use and dignity. I find them as manifold as there are considerations of good and evil. They are the strong and sensible motions of my soul, according to my apprehensions of good and evil. By them by soul is capable of union with the highest good. By love and de- light I am capable of enjoying God, and resting in him as the centre of my soul. This noble understanding, thoughts, conscience, will, passions, and affections, are the principal faculties, acts, and powers of this my high and heaven-born soul. And being thus richly en- dowed and furnished,
I find it could never rise out of matter, or come into my body by way of generation ; the souls of brutes, that rise that way, are destitute of understanding, reason, conscience, and such other ex- cellent faculties and powers as I find in my own soul. They can- not know, or love, or delight in God, or set their affections on things spiritual, invisible, and eternal as my soul is capable to do ; it was therefore created and infused immediately into this body of mine by the Father of spirits, and that with a strong inclination, and tender affection to my flesh, without which it would be remiss and careless in performing its several duties and offices to it, during the time of its abode therein.
Fearfully and wonderfully, therefore, am I made, and designed for nobler ends and uses, than for a few days to eat, and drink, and sleep, and talk, and die. My soul is of more value than ten thousand worlds. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
From the several parts and branches of this description of the soul, we may gather the choice fruits which naturally grow upon them, in the following inferences and deduction of truth and duty. For we may say of them all what the historian doth of Palestine, that there is nihil infructuosum, nihil sterile, no branch or shrub is
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAM. 52.J
barren, or unfruitful. Let us then search it branch by branch : and,
Inf. 1. From the substantial nature of the soul, which we have proved to be a being distinct from the body, and subsisting by itself, we are informed, That great is the difference betwixt the death of a man, and the death of all other creatures in the world. Their souls depend on, and perish with their bodies ; but ours neither result from them, nor perish with them *. My body is not a body, when my soul hath forsaken it ; but my soul will remain a soul when this body is crumbled into dust. Men may live like beasts, a mere sen- sual life ; yea, in some sense, they may die like beasts, a stupid death; but in fliis there will be found a vast difference: Death kills both parts of the beasts, destroys the matter and form ; it toucheth only one part of man ; it destroyeth the body, and only dislodgeth the soul, but cannot destroy it.
In some things Solomon shews the agreement betwixt our death and theirs, Eccl. iii. 19, 20, 21. " That which befalleth the sons " of men, befalleth the beasts ; even one thing befalleth them : " as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; all go to one place ; all " are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." We breathe the same common air they breathe ; wTe feel the same pains of death they feel; our bodies are resolved into the same earth theirs are. Oh ! but in this is the difference, The spirit qfmangoeth upward, and the spirit of a beast goeth downward to the earth. Their spirits go two ways at their dissolution ; the one to the earth, and the other to God that gave it; as he speaks, chap. xii. 7. Though our dissolution and expiration have some agreement, yet great is the odds in the consequences of death to the one and the other. They have no pleasures nor pains besides those they enjoy or feel now; but so have we, and those eternal, or unspeakable too. The soul of man, like the bird in the shell, is still growing or ripening in sin or grace, till at last the shell breaks by death, and the soul flies away to the place it is prepared for, and where it must abide for ever. The body, which is but its shell, perisheth ; but the soul lives when it is fallen away -|\
How doth this consideration expose and aggravate the folly and madness of this sensual world, who herd themselves with beasts, though they have souls so near akin to angels ! The princes and nobles of the world abhor to associate themselves with mechanics
* So great a prerogative manifestly proves that the soul, which is the governing part, is not material and mortal, but of a superior and more excellent nature, greatly different from the condition of other souls. Conimb. Disp. on separate, souls, p. 584.
f They grow up together, and are again separated, and both return to whence they came; the earth downward, and the spirit upward. Epicha,
526 A TKEAT1SE OF THE SOUL OF MAtf.
in their shops, or take a place among the sottish rabble upon an ale-bench ; they know and keep their distance and decorum, as still carrying with them a sense of honour, and abhorring to act beneath it : But we equalize our high and noble souls in the manner of life with the beasts that perish. Our tables differ little from the crib at which they feed ; or our houses from the stalls and stables in which they lie down to rest, in respect of any divine worship or heavenly communication that is to be heard there. Happy had it been for such men (if so they live and die) that their souls had been of no higher extraction, or larger capacity, or longer duration than that of a beast : for then, as their comforts, so also their miseries had ended at death. And such they will one day wish they had been.
A separate soul immediately capable of blessedness.
Inf. % The soul of man being substance, and not depending in its being on the body or any other fellow-creature, There can be no reason, on the souVs account, why its blessedness should be delayed till the resurrection of the body.