2. The soul discovers its esteem and value for the body in all the fears it hath about it. Did not the soul love it exceedingly, it would never be affrighted for it, and on its account, so much and so often as it is. What a panic fear do the dangers of the body cast the soul into? Isa. vii. 2. When the body is in danger, the soul is in distraction, the soul is in fears and tremblings about it : these fears flow from the souls tender love and affection to the body ; if it did not love it so intensely, it would never afflict and torment itself at that rate it doth about it : Satan, the professed enemy of our souls, being thoroughly acquainted with those fears which flow from the fountain of love to the body, politicly improves them in the way of temptation to the utter ruin of some, and the great ha- zard of other's souls ; he edges and sharpens his temptations upon us this way ; he puts our bodies into danger, that he may thereby endanger our souls ; he reckons, if he can but draw the body into danger, fear will quickly drive the soul into temptation ; it is not so much from Satan's malice or hatred of our bodies, that he stirs up persecutions against us : but he knows the tie of affection is so strong betwixt these friends, that love will draw, and fear will drive the soul into many and great hazards of its own happiness, to free the body out of those dangers. Prov. xxix. 25. " The fear of man " brings a snare :" and Heb. xi. 37. " Tortured and tempted."
Upon this ground also it is, that this life becomes a life of temp- tation to all men, and there is no freedom from that danger, till we be freed from the body, and set at liberty by death. Separated souls are the only free souls. They that carry no flesh about them, need carry no fears of temptation" within them. It is the body which catches the sparks of temptation.
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3. The soul manifests its dear love and affection to the body, by its sympathy, and compassionate feeling of all its burdens : whaU ever touches the body, by way of injury, affects the soul also by way of sympathy. The soul and body are as strings of two musi- cal instruments set exactly at one height ; if one be touched, the other trembles. They laugh and cry, are sick and well together. This is a wonderful mystery, and a rare secret (as a learned man observes) how the soul comes to sympathize with the body, and to have not only a knowledge, but as it were a feeling of its necessities and infirmities ; how this fleshly lump comes to affect, and make its deep impressions upon a creature of so different a nature from it, as the soul or spirit is. But that it doth so, though we know not how, is plain and sensible to any man. If any member of the body, though but the lowest and meanest, be in pain and misery, the soul is presently affected with it, and commands the eyes to watch, yea, to weep, the hands to bind it up with all tenderness, and defend it from the least injurious touch; the lips to complain of its misery, and beg pity and help from others for it. If the body be in dan- ger, how are the faculties of the soul, understanding, memory, in- vention, &c. employed with utmost strength and concernment for its deliverance ! This is a real and unexceptionable evidence of its dear and tender love to the body. As those that belong to one mystical body shew their sincere love this way, 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26. so the soul.
4. The soul manifesteth its love to the body, by its fears of death, and extreme aversion to a separation from it. On this ac- count death is called in Job xviii. 14. " The king of terrors," or the black prince, or the prince of clouds and darkness, as some translate that place : We read it, " The king of terrors," meaning, that the terrors at death are such terrors as subdue and keep down all other terrors under them, as a prince doth his subjects. Other terrors compared with those that the soul conceives and conflicts with at parting, are no more than a cut finger, to the laying one's head on the block. Oh ! the soul and body are strongly twisted and knit together in dear bands of intimate union and affection, and these bands cannot be broken without much struggling : Oh ! it is a hard thing for the soul to bid the body farewell, it is a bitter parting, a doleful separation : Nothing is heard in that hour but the most deep and emphatical groans ; I say emphatical groans, the deep sense and meaning of which the living are but little acquainted with : For no man living hath yet felt the sorrows of a parting pull ; whatsoever other sorrows he hath felt in the body, yet they must be supposed to be far short of these.
The sorrows of death are in scripture set forth unto us, by the bearing throes of a travailing woman, Acts ii. 24. udtvag m Qumns,
A TREATISE OF THE SOUL OF MAX. 593
and what those mean, many can tell. The soul is in labour, it will not let go its hold of the body, but by constraint : Death is a close siege, and when the soul is beaten out of its body, it disputes the passage with death, as soldiers use to do with an anemy that enters by storm, and fights and strives to the last. It is also compared to a battle or sharp fight, EccJ. viii. 8. that war. That war with an emphasis. No conflict so sharp, each labour to the utmost to drive the other from the ground they stand on, and win the field. And though grace much over-powers nature in this matter, and recon- ciles it to death, and makes it desire to be dissolved, yet saints wholly put not off this reluctation of nature, 2 Cor. v. 2. Not that we would be unclothed ; as it is with one willing to wade over a brook to his father's house, puts his foot into the water, and feels it cold, starts back, and is loth to venture in ; Not that we would be un- clothed. And if it be so with sanctified souls, how is it, think you, with others? Mark the scripture language, Job xxvii. 8. God taketh away their souls, saith our translation; but the root is, hws extrahere, and signifies to pull out by plain force and violence. A graceless soul dieth not by consent, but force. Thus Adrian be- wailed his departure, O Animula, vagula, blandula, heu quo vadis !* Yea, though the soul have never so long a time been in the body, though it should live as long as the Antediluvian fathers did, for many hundred years, yet still it would be loth to part; yea, though it endure abundance of misery in the body, and have little rest or comfort, but time spent in griefs and fears, yet for all that it is loth to part with it. All this shews a strong inclination and affection to it.