nature, and thinking of any thing that can be said against it, or the searching, trying way, be better. On the one side, I have known many godly women that never disputed the matter, but served God comfortably to a very old age, (between eighty and one hundred,) to have lived many years in a cheerful readiness and desire of death, and such as few learned studious men do ever attain to in that degree; who, no doubt, had this as a divine reward of their long and faithful service of God, and trusting in him. On the other side, a studious man can hardly keep off all objections, or secure his mind against the suggestions of difficulties and doubts; and if they come in they must be answered; seeing we give them half a victory, if we cast them off before we can answer them. And a faith that is not upheld by such evidence of truth as reason can discern and justify, is oft joined with much secret doubting, which men dare not open, but do not therefore overcome; and its weakness may have a weakening deficiency, as to all the graces and duties which should be strengthened by it. And who knoweth how soon a temptation from Satan or infidels, or our own dark hearts, may assault us, which will not, without such evidence and resolving light be overcome? And yet many that try and reason, and dispute most, have not the strongest, or most powerful faith.

And my thoughts of this have had this issue: 1. There is a great difference between that light which showeth us the thing itself, and that artificial skill by which we have right notions, names, definitions, and formed arguments and answers to objections. This artificial, logical, organical kind of knowledge is good and useful in its kind, if right,

like speech itself; but he that hath much of this may have little of the former; and unlearned persons, that have little of this, may have more of the former; and may have those inward perceptions of the verity of the promises and rewards of God, which they cannot bring forth into artificial reasonings to themselves or others; who are taught of God by the effective sort of teaching which reacheth the heart or will, as well as the understanding, and is a giving of what is taught, and a making us such as we are told we must be.' And who findeth not need to pray hard for this effective teaching of God when he hath got all organical knowledge; and words and arguments in themselves most apt at his fingers' ends, as we say? When I can prove the truth of the Word of God and the life to come, with the most convincing undeniable reasons, I feel need to cry and pray daily to God to increase my faith, and to give me that light which may satisfy the soul and reach the end.

Yet man being a rational creature, is not taught by mere instinct and inspiration; and therefore, this effective teaching of God doth ordinarily suppose a rational, objective, organical teaching and knowledge. And the foresaid unlearned Christians are convinced by good evidence, that God's Word is true, and his rewards are sure, though they have but a confused conception of this evidence, and cannot word it, nor reduce it to fit notions. And to drive these that have fundamental evidence unseasonably and hastily to dispute their faith; and so to puzzle them by words and artificial objections,

This is the true mean between George Keith, the Quaker's doctrine of continued inspiration and intuition, and that on the other extreme.

is but to hurt them, by setting the artificial organical lower part (which is the body of knowledge) against the real light and perception of the thing (which is as the soul) even as carnal men set the creatures against God, that should lead us to God; so do they by logical artificial knowledge.

But they that are prepared for such disputes, and furnished with all artificial helps, may make good use of them for defending and clearing up the truth to themselves and others; so be it they use them as a means to the due end and in a right manner, and set them not up against, or instead of the real and effective light.

But the revealed and necessary part must here be distinguished from the unrevealed and unnecessary. To study till we, as clearly as may be, understand the certainty of a future happiness, and wherein it consisteth; (in the sight of God's glory, and in perfect, holy, mutual love, in union with Christ and all the blessed ;) this is of great use to our holiness and peace. But when we will know more than God would have us, it doth but tend (as gazing on the sun) to make us blind, and to doubt of certainties, because we cannot be resolved of uncertainties. To trouble our heads too much in thinking how souls out of the body do subsist and act, sensitively or not by organs, or without; how far they are one, and how far still inviduate, in what place they shall remain, and where is their paradise or heaven; how they shall be again united to the body; whether by their own emission, as the sunbeams touch their objects here, and whether the body shall be restored, as the consumed flesh of restored sick men, aliunde, that is, from new, or only from the old materials. A hundred of these ques

tions are better left to the knowledge of Christ, lest we do but foolishly make snares for ourselves. Had all these been needful to us, they had been revealed. In respect to all such curiosities and needless knowledge, it is a believer's wisdom implicitly to trust his soul to Christ, and to be satisfied that he knoweth what we know not, and to fear that vain, vexatious knowledge, or inquisitiveness into good and evil, which is selfish, and savoureth of a distrust of God, and is that sin, and fruit of sin, which the learned world too little feareth.

That God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and that holy souls shall be in blessedness with Christ; these following evidences conjoined do evince, on which my soul doth raise its hopes.

1. The soul, which is an immortal spirit, must be immortally in a good or bad condition; but man's soul is an immortal spirit, and the good are not in a bad condition: its immortality is proved thus, "A spiritual, or most pure invisible substance, naturally endowed with the power, virtue, or faculty of vital action, intellection and volition, which is not annihilated nor destroyed by separation of parts, nor ceaseth or loseth either its power, species, individuation or action, is an immortal spirit. But such is the soul of man, as shall be manifest by parts."

The soul is a substance; for that which is nothing can do nothing; but it doth move, understand, and will. No man will deny that this is done by something in us, and by some substance; and that substance is it which we call the soul; it is not nothing, and it is within us.

As to them that say, It is the temperament of

several parts conjunct; I have elsewhere fully confuted them and proved, 1. That it is some one part that is the agent on the rest, which all they confess that think it to be the material spirits or fiery part. It is not bones and flesh that understand, but a purer substance, as all acknowledge. 2. What part soever it can be, it can do no more than it is able to do; and a conjunction of many parts, of which no one hath the power of vitality, intellection, or volition, formally or eminently (somewhat as excellent) can never by a contemperation do those acts; for there can be no more in the effect than is in the cause, otherwise it were no effect.

The vanity of their objections, that tell us, a lute, a watch, a book, perform that by co-operation, which no one part can do, I have elsewhere manifested. 1. Many strings, indeed, have many motions, and so have many effects on the ear and phantasy, which in us are sound and harmony; but all is but a percussion of the air by the strings, and were not that motion received by a sensitive soul, it would be no music or melody; so that there is nothing done but what each part had power to do. But intellection and volition are not the conjunct motions of all parts of the body, receiving their form in a nobler intellective nature, as the sound of the strings maketh melody in man. If it were so, that receptive nature still would be as excellent as the effect importeth. 2. And the watch or clock doth but move according to the action of the spring or poise; but that it moveth in such an order as becometh to man a sign and measure of time; this is from man who ordereth it to that use. But there is nothing in the motion but what the parts have their power to cause; and that it signifieth the hour of the days to us is