(3.) And I find, that the inordinate contraction of man to himself, and to the interest of this individual person, with the defect of love to all about us, according to every creature's goodness, and especially to God, the infinite good, whom we should love above ourselves, is the very sum of all the pravity of man. And all the injustice and injury to others, and all the neglect of good works in the world, and all our daily terrors, and self-distracting, self-tormenting cares, and griefs, and fears, proceed from this inordinate love and adhesion to ourselves; therefore I have reason to think, that, in our better state, we shall perfectly love others as ourselves, and the selfish love will turn into a common and a divine love, which must be by our preferring the common, and the divine good and interest.

And I am so sensible of the power and plague of selfishness, and how it now corrupteth, tempteth, and disquieteth me, that when I feel any fears, lest individuation cease, and my soul fall into one common soul, (as the stoics thought all souls did at death,) I find great cause to suspect, that this ariseth from the power of this corrupting selfishness; for reason seeth no cause at all to fear it, were it so.

(4.) For I find, also, that the nature of love is to desire as near a union as possible; and the strongest love doth strongliest desire it. Fervent lovers think they can scarce be too much one: and love is our perfection, and therefore so is union.

(5.) And I find, that when Christians had the first and full pourings out of the Spirit, they had the ferventest love, and the nearest union, and the least desire of propriety and distance.

(6.) And I find, that Christ's prayer for the felicity of his disciples, is a prayer for their unity; John xvii. 22, 23. And in this he placeth much of their perfection.

(7.) And I find, also, that man is of a social nature, and that all men find by experience, that conjunction in societies is needful for their safety, strength, and pleasure.

(8.) And I find, that my soul would fain be nearer God, and that darkness and distance is my misery, and near communion is it that would answer all the tendencies of my soul: why, then, should I fear too near a union?

I think it utterly improbable, that my soul should become more nearly united to any creature than to God; (though it be of the same kind with other souls, and infinitely below God;) for God is as near me as I am to myself: I still depend on him, as the effect upon its total, constant cause; and that not as the fruit upon the tree, which borroweth all from the earth, water, air, and fire, which it communicateth to its fruit; but as a creature on its Creator, who hath no being but what it receiveth totally from God, by constant

communication. Hence Antonine, Seneca, and the rest of the stoics, thought that all the world was God, or one great animal, consisting of divine spirit and matter, as man of soul and body; sometimes calling the supposed soul of the world God; and sometimes calling the whole world God; but still meaning that the universe was but one spirit and body united, and that we all are parts of God, or of the body of God, or accidents, at least.

And even the Popish mystical divines, in their pretensions to the highest perfection, say the same in sense; such as Benedict. Anglus in his Regula Perfectionis, (approved by many doctors,) who placed much of his supereminent life in our believing verily that there is nothing but God, as the beams are to the sun, and as the heat is to the fire; (which really is itself;) and so teaching us to rest in all things as good, as being nothing but God's essential will, which is himself, (resolving even our sins and imperfections accordingly into God, so that they are God's or none.)

And all these men have as fair a pretense for the conceits of such an union with God now, as for such an union after death: for their reason is, 1. That God being infinite, there can be no more beings than his own; but God and the smallest being distinct, would be more entity than God alone; but infinity can have no addition. 2. Because ens et bonum convertuntur; but God only is good.

And if we are, notwithstanding all this, distinct beings from God now, we shall not be so advanced as to be deified, and of creatures, or distinct beings, turned into a being infinitely above us. If we be not parts of God now, we shall not be so then.

But if they could prove that we are so now, we should quickly prove to them, 1. That then God hath material, divisible parts, (as the stoics thought.) 2. And that we are no such parts, as are not distinct from one another; but some are tormented, and some happy. And, 3. That (as is said) it will be no abatement of the misery of the tormented, nor the felicity of the blessed, to tell them that they are all parts of God; for, though the manner of our union with him, and dependence on him, be past our compre hension, yet that we are distinct and distant from each other, and have each one a joy or misery of his own, is past all doubt. Therefore, there is no union with God to be feared by holy souls, but the utmost possible to be highliest desired.

And if our union with God shall not cease our individuation, or resolve us into a principle to be feared, we may say also of our union with any common soul, or many: if we be unible, we are partible, and so have a distinct, though not a divided substance, which will have its proper accidents. All plants are parts of the earth, really united to it, and radicated in it, and live and are nourished

by it; and yet a vine is a vine; and an apple is an apple; and a rose is a rose; and a nettle is a nettle. And few men would be toiled horses, or toads, if it were proved that they are animated by a common soul.

But God letteth us see, that though the world be one, yet he dighteth in a wonderful diversity and multiplicity of individuals. How various and numerous are they in the sea, and on the land, and in the air! And are there none in the other world? How come the stars therein to be so numerous, which are of the same element? and though, perhaps, Saturn, or some other planets, or many stars, may send forth their radiant effluvia, or parts, into the same air, which the sunbeams seem totally to fill and illuminate, yet the rays of the sun, and of other stars, are not the same, how near soever in the same air.

Were there now no more contraction by egoity, or propriety among men, nor mine and thine did signify no more, nor the distance were greater than that of the several drops of water in the sea, or particles of light in the illuminated air, but I had all my part in such a perfect unity and communion with all others, and knew that all were as happy as I, so that there were no divisions by cross interests or minds, but all were one, certainly it would make my own comforts greater by far than they are now. Are not an hundred candles set together and united as splendid a flame as if they were all set asunder? So one soul, one love, one joy, would be.*

Obj. But this would equalize the good and bad, or, at least, those that were good in several degrees; and where, then, were the reward and punishment?

Answ. It would not equal them at all, any more than distinct personality would do: for, 1. The souls of all holy persons may be so united, as that the souls of the wicked shall have no part in that union. Whether the souls of the wicked shall be united in one sinful, miserable soul, or, rather, but in one sinful society, or be greatlier separate, disunited, contrary to each other, and militant, as part of their sin and misery, is nothing to this case. Yet natural and moral union must be differenced. God is the root of nature to the worst; and however in one sense it is said, that there is nothing in God but God, yet it is true, that in him all live, and move, and have their being; but yet the wicked's inbeing in God doth afford them no sanctifying or beatifying com

2.

* Two paragraphs are here omitted; they contain an abstruse answer to an abstruse objection, both being founded, like much of the reasoning in the context; on a philosophy now obsolete.-Ed.

munion with him, as experience showeth us in this life; which yet holy souls have, as being made capable recipients of it. As I said, different plants, briers, and cedars, the stinking and the sweet, are implanted parts (or accidents) of the same world or earth. 3. And the godly themselves may have as different a share of happiness in one common soul, as they have now of holiness, and so as different rewards, (even as roses, and rosemary, and other herbs, differ in the same garden, and several fruits in the same orchard, or on the same tree.) For, if souls are unible, and so partible substances, they have neither more nor less of substance or holiness for their union; and so will each have his proper measure. As a tun of water cast into the sea will there still be the same, and more than a spoonful cast into it.

Obj. But spirits are not as bodies, extensive and quantitative, and so not partible or divisible; and therefore your supposition is vain.

Answ. 1. My supposition is but the objector's; for, if they confess that spirits are substances, (as cannot with reason be denied; for they that specify their operations by motion only, yet suppose a pure, proper substance to be the substance or thing moved,) then when they talk of many souls becoming one, it must be by conjunction, and increase of the substance of that one; or when they say, that they were always one, they will confess, withal, that they now differ in number, as individuate in the body. And who will say, that millions of millions are no more than one of all those millions? Number is a sort of quantity; and all souls in the world are more than Cain's or Abel's only; one feeleth not what another feeleth; one knoweth not what another knoweth. And indeed, though souls have not such corporeal extension as passive, gross, bodily matter hath, yet, as they are more noble, they have a more noble sort of extension, quantity, or degrees, according to which all mankind conceive of all the spiritual substance of the universe; yea, all the angels, or all the souls on earth, as being more, and having more substance than one man's soul alone. 2. And the fathers, for the most part, especially the Greeks, (yea, and the second council of Nice,) thought that spirits created had a purer sort of material being, which Tertullian called a body; and, doubtless, all created spirits have somewhat of passiveness; for they do recipere vel pati from the divine influx; only God is wholly impassive. We are moved when we move, and acted when we act; and it is hard to conceive, that (when matter is commonly called passive) that which is passive should have no sort of matter in a large sense taken; and if it had any parts distinguishable, they are by God divisible. 3. But if the contrary be supposed, that all

souls are no more than one, and so that there is no place for uniting or partition, there is no place then for the objection of all souls becoming one, and of losing individuation, unless they mean by annihilation.

But that God who (as is said) delighteth both in the union, and yet in the wonderful multiplicity of creatures, and will not make all stars to be only one; though fire have a most uniting or aggregative inclination, hath further given experimental notice that there is individuation in the other world as well as here, even innumerable angels and devils, and not one only; as apparitions and witches, and many other evidences, prove; of which more anon. So that, all things considered, there is no reason to fear that the souls shall lose their individuation or activity, (though they change their manner of action,) any more than their being or formal power; and so it is naturally certain that they are immortal.

And if holy souls are so far immortal, I need not prove that they will be immortally happy; for their holiness will infer it; and few will ever dream that it shall there go ill with them that are good, and that the most just and holy God will not use those well whom he maketh holy.

II. That holy souls shall be hereafter happy, seemeth to be one of the common notices of nature planted in the consciences of mankind; and it is therefore acknowledged by the generality of the world that freely use their understandings. Most, yea, almost all the heathen nations at this day believe it, besides the Mahometans; and it is the most barbarous cannibals and Brazilians that do not, whose understandings have had the least improvement, and who have rather an inconsiderate nescience of it, than a denying opposition. And though some philosophers denied it, they were a small and contemned party: and though many of the rest were somewhat dubious, it was only a certainty which they professed to want, and not a probability or opinion that it was true; and both the vulgar and the deep-studied men believed it, and those that questioned it were the half-studied philosophers, who, not resting in the natural notice, nor yet reaching full intellectual evidence of it by discourse, had found out matter of difficulty to puzzle them, and came not to that degree of wisdom as would have resolved them.

And even among apostates from Christianity, most, or many, still acknowledge the soul's immortality, and the felicity and reward of holy souls, to be of the common notices, known by nature to mankind. Julian was so much persuaded of it, that, on that account, he exhorteth his priests and subjects to great strictness and holiness of life, and to see that the Christian did not exceed them and, among us, the Lord Herbert de Veritate, and many others that seem not to believe our supernatural revelations of