prize, pamper, and exalt this vassal and slave of death, and forget altogether (or only remember at our cast-away leisure) the imprisoned immortal soul, which can neither die with the reprobate, nor perish with the mortal parts of virtuous men: seeing God's justice in the one, and his goodness in the other, is exercised for evermore, as the ever-living subjects of his reward and punishment. But when is it that we examine this great account? never while we have one vanity left us to spend: we plead for titles, till our breath fail us; dig for riches, while our strength enableth us; exercise malice, while we can revenge; and then, when time hath beaten from us both youth, pleasure, and health, and that nature itself hateth the house of old age, we remember with eJob, that we must go the way from whence we shall not return, and that our bed is made ready for us in the dark; and then, I say, looking over-late into the bottom of our conscience, (which pleasure and ambition had locked up from us all our lives,) we behold therein the fearful images of our actions past, and withal this terrible inscription, fThat God will bring every work into judgment that man hath done under the sun. But what examples have ever moved us? what persuasions reformed us? or what threatenings made us afraid? We behold other men's tragedies played before us, we hear what is promised and threatened: but the world's bright glory hath put out the eyes of our minds; and these betraying lights (with which we only see) do neither look up towards termless joys, nor down towards endless sorrows, till we neither know nor can look for any thing else at the world's hands. Of which excellently Marius Victor : Nil hostes, nil dira fames, nil denique morbi Sub vitiis nullo culparum fine manentes. Diseases, famine, enemies, in us no change have wrought, No time can our corrupted manners mend, In vice we dwell, in sin that hath no end. But let us not flatter our immortal souls herein; for to neglect God all our lives, and know that we neglect him; to offend God voluntarily, and know that we offend him, casting our hopes on the peace which we trust to make at parting, is no other than a rebellious presumption, and (that which is the worst of all) even a contemptuous laughing to scorn, and deriding of God, his laws, and precepts. f Frustra sperant, qui sic de misericordia Dei sibi blandiuntur; They hope in vain," saith Bernard, " which in this sort "flatter themselves with God's mercy." 66 SECT. IV. Of the spirit of life which God breathed into man in his creation. IN this frame and carcass God breathed the breath of life; and the man was a living soul: that is, God gave to a body of earth and of corruptible matter a soul spiritual and incorruptible; not that God had any such bodily instruments as men use, but God breathed the spirit of life and immortality into man, as he breatheth his grace daily into such as love and fear him. The Spirit of God, saith Elihu in Job, hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life: In qua sententia, saith Rabanus, vitanda est paupertas sensus carnalis, ne forte putemus Deum, vel manibus corporeis de limo formasse corpus hominis, vel faucibus aut labiis suis inspirasse in faciem formati, ut vivere possit et spiraculum vitæ habere: nam et `propheta cum ait, manus tuæ fecerunt me, &c. tropica hac locutione magis quam propria (id est, juxta consuetudinem, qua solent homines operari) locutus est: "In which sen 66 tence,” saith he," the beggarliness of carnal sense is to be "avoided, lest perhaps we should think, either that God "with bodily hands made man's body of slime, or breathed "with jaws or lips upon his face, (being formed,) that he "might live, and have the spirit of life: for the prophet 66 66 "also when he saith, thy hands have made me, spake this tropically, rather than properly, that is, according to the "custom which men use in working." Quantum est periculi hiis, qui scripturas sensu corporeo legunt! "In what danger are they that read the scriptures in a carnal "sense!" By this breath was infused into man both life and soul, and therefore this soul the philosophers call animam, quæ vivificat corpus, et animat; "which doth "animate and give life to the body." The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding, saith Job; and this spirit, which God breathed into man, which is the reasonable soul of man, returneth again to God that gave it, as the body returneth unto the earth, out of which it was taken, according to Ecclesiastes; h And dust shall return to the earth, out of which it was taken; and the spirit shall return to God that gave it. Neither is this word spirit usually otherwise taken in the scriptures than for the soul; as when Stephen cried unto God, Domine, suscipe spiritum meum, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit:" and in St. John, k And Jesus bowed his head, and gave up the ghost, or spirit; which was, that his life and soul left his body dead. And that the immortal soul of man differeth from the souls of beasts, the manner of the creation maketh it manifest: for it is written, 'Let the waters bring forth in abundance every creeping thing, and let the earth bring forth the living thing according to his kind, the beast of the earth, &c. But of man it is written, Let us make man in our own image, &c.; and further, that m the Lord breathed in his face the breath of life. Wherefore, as from the water and earth were those creatures brought forth, and thence received life; so shall they again be dissolved into the same first matter whence they were taken: but the life of breath everlasting, which God breathed into man, shall, according to Ecclesiastes, nreturn again to God that gave it. h Eccl. xii. 7. i Acts vii. 59. 1 Gen. i. 20. 24. 26. m Gen. ii. 7. n Eccl. xii. 7. SECT. V. That man is, as it were, a little world: with a digression touching our mortality. MAN, thus compounded and formed by God, was an abstract or model, or brief story of the universal: in whom God concluded the creation and work of the world, and whom he made the last and most excellent of his creatures, being internally endued with a divine understanding, by which he might contemplate and serve his Creator, after whose image he was formed, and endued with the powers and faculties of reason and other abilities, that thereby also he might govern and rule the world, and all other God's creatures therein. And whereas God created three sorts of living natures, to wit, angelical, rational, and brutal; giving to angels an intellectual, and to beasts a sensual nature, he vouchsafed unto man both the intellectual of angels, the sensitive of beasts, and the proper rational belonging unto man, and therefore, saith Gregory Nazianzene, PHomo est utriusque naturæ vinculum; "Man is the bond "and chain which tieth together both natures:" and because in the little frame of man's body there is a representation of the universal, and (by allusion) a kind of participation of all the parts thereof, therefore was man called microcosmos, or the little world. Deus igitur hominem factum, velut alterum quendam mundum, in brevi magnum, atque exiguo totum, in terris statuit; “God therefore placed in "the earth the man whom he had made, as it were another "world, the great and large world in the small and little "world;" for out of earth and dust was formed the flesh of man, and therefore heavy and lumpish; the bones of his body we may compare to the hard rocks and stones, and therefore strong and durable; of which Ovid : * Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, • Ar. Phys. 1. 8. c. 2. 1. 17. f. C. 2. Aug. 1. qu. 83. 4. 67. retr. 1. 1. r Ovid. Met. 1. 1. From thence our kind hard-hearted is, Enduring pain and care, A stony nature are. His blood, which disperseth itself by the branches of veins through all the body, may be resembled to those waters which are carried by brooks and rivers over all the earth; his breath to the air; his natural heat to the enclosed warmth which the earth hath in itself, which, stirred up by the heat of the sun, assisteth nature in the speedier procreation of those varieties which the earth bringeth forth; our radical moisture, oil, or balsamum, (whereon the natural heat feedeth and is maintained,) is resembled to the fat and fertility of the earth; the hairs of man's body, which adorns, or overshadows it, to the grass, which covereth the upper face and skin of the earth; our generative power, to nature, which produceth all things; our determinations, to the light, wandering, and unstable clouds, carried every where with uncertain winds; our eyes, to the light of the sun and moon; and the beauty of our youth, to the flowers of the spring, which, either in a very short time, or with the sun's heat, dry up and wither away, or the fierce puffs of wind blow them from the stalks; the thoughts of our mind, to the motion of angels; and our pure understanding, (formerly called mens, and that which always looketh upwards,) to those intellectual natures which are always present with God; and, lastly, our immortal souls (while they are righteous) are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude. And although, in respect of God, there is no man just, or good, or righteous, (for, sin angelis deprehensa est stultitia, “Behold, he "found folly in his angels," saith Job;) yet, with such a kind of difference as there is between the substance and the shadow, there may be found a goodness in man: which God being pleased to accept, hath therefore called man the image and similitude of his own righteousness. In this also • Job iv. 18. |
