mortua._ The nearer any
thing is to the earthly matter, as it hath less action, so less life and
feeling. Man is nearer an angel than beasts, and therefore he hath a
knowing understanding spirit in him. There is a spirit in man, and the
more or less this spirit of man is abstracted from sensual and material
things, it lives the more excellent and pure life, and is, as it were,
more or less delivered from the chains of the body. These souls that have
never risen above, and retired from sensible things, O, how narrow are
they,--how captivated within the prison of the flesh! But when the Lord
Jesus comes to set free he delivers a soul from this bondage, he makes
these chains fall off and leads the soul apart to converse with God
himself, and to meditate on things not seen--sin, wrath, hell, and heaven.
And the farther it goes from itself, and the more abstracted it is from
the consideration of present things, the more it lives a life like angels.
And therefore, when the soul is separated from the body, it is then
perfectly free, and hath the largest extent of knowledge. A man's soul
must be almost like Paul's "whether out of the body, or in the body, I
know not,"--if he would understand aright spiritual things. Now then, this
infinite Spirit is an all knowing Spirit, all seeing Spirit, as well as
all-present, "there is no searching of his understanding," Isa. xl. 28,
Psalm. cxlvii. 5. "Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his
counsellor, hath taught him?" Isa. xl. 13, Rom. xi. 34. He calls the
generations from the beginning, and known to him are all his works from
the beginning. O that you would always set this God before you, or rather
set yourselves always in his presence, in whose sight you are always! How
would it compose our hearts to reverence and fear in all our actions, if
we did indeed believe that the Judge of all the world is an eye witness to
our most retired and secret thoughts and doings! If any man were as privy
to thy thoughts, as thy own spirit and conscience, thou wouldst blush and
be ashamed before him. If every one of us could open a window into one
another's spirits, I think this assembly should dismiss as quickly as that
of Christ's, when he bade them that were without sin cast a stone at the
woman. We could not look one upon another. O then, why are we so little
apprehensive of the all-searching eye of God, who can even declare to us
our thought, before it be? How much atheism is rooted in