“We don't think ourselves fit to deal with one another in human affairs till our age of one and twenty. But to deal with our offended Maker, to counterplot the malice of fallen Angels, and to rescue ourselves from eternal ruin, we are generally as well qualified before we can speak plain, as all our life-time after. Children can say over their religion at four or five years old, and their parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty. The common Creed of the Christian religion may be learned in an hour: and one days philosophy will teach a man to die. But to know the virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ, is a science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever.
“But if man may be thus changed without death, and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life; what then is Death? Or, whereunto serveth it? What is it? Why 'tis a misfortune fallen upon man from the beginning, and from which he has not yet dared to attempt his recovery: and it serves as a Spectre to fright us into a little better life (perhaps) than we should lead without it. Though God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life, Men have made an agreement with Death and Hell, by way of composition to submit to Death, in hope of escaping Hell by that obedience; and under this allegiance we think ourselves bound never to rebel against it! The study of Philosophy is to teach men to die, from the observations of Nature; the profession of Divinity is to enforce the doctrine from Revelation: and the science of the Law is to settle our civil affairs pursuant to these resolutions. The old men are making their last Wills and Testaments; and the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the testators; and thus
Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis.
I was under this Law of Death once; and while I lay under it, I felt the terror of it, till I had delivered myself from it by those thoughts which must convince them that have them. And in this thing only, I wish, for their sakes, that all men were as I am. The reason why I believe that this doctrine is true, is, because God hath said it: yet I could not thus assert it by argument, if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any maxims or positions in human science. The Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of itself and a science of itself, which can never be known by the study of any other science. It is a science out of Man's way, being a pure invention of God. Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself; but to raise his ambition for learning this, God graduates him upon his degree of knowledge in it, and gives him badges of honour as belonging to that degree, upon the attainment whereof a man gains the title of a Child of the Resurrection: to which title belongs this badge of honour, to die no more but make our exit by translation, as Christ, who was the first of this Order, did before us. And this world being the academy to educate Man for Heaven, none shall ever enter there till they have taken this degree here.
“Let the Dead bury the Dead! and the Dead lie with the Dead! And the rest of the Living go lie with them! I'll follow him that was dead, and is alive, and living for ever. And though I am now single, yet I believe that this belief will be general before the general change, of which Paul speaks, shall come; and that then, and not before, shall be the Resurrection of the Just, which is called the first Resurrection; and after that the Dead so arisen, with the Living, then alive, shall have learned this faith, which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the air, then shall be the General Resurrection, after which Time shall be no more.
“The beginning of this faith, like all other parts of the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a grain of mustard seed, spreading itself by degrees till it overshadow the whole earth. And since ‘the things concerning Him must have an end,’ in order to this they must have a beginning. But whoever leads the van will make the world start, and must expect for himself to walk up and down, like Cain, with a mark on his forehead, and run the gauntlet for an Ishmaelite, having every man's hand against him because his hand is against every man; than which nothing is more averse to my temper. This makes me think of publishing with as much regret as he that ran way from his errand when sent to Niniveh: but being just going to cross the water—(he was going to Ireland,—) I dared not leave this behind me undone, lest a Tempest send me back again to do it. And to shelter myself a little, (though I knew my speech would betray me) I left the Title page anonymous. Nor do I think that any thing would now extort my name from me but the dread of the sentence, ‘he that is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will I be ashamed before my Father and his Angels:’ for fear of which I dare not but subscribe my argument, though with a trembling hand; having felt two powers within me all the while I have been about it, one bids me write, and the other bobs my elbow. But since I have wrote this, as Pilate did his inscription, without consulting any one, I'll be absolute as he was; ‘what I have written, I have written.’
“Having pursued that command, ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God,’ I yet expect the performance of that promise, ‘to receive in this life an hundred fold, and in the world to come life everlasting.’ I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of which Heaven itself would be uneasy to me: but when that is done I know no business I have with the dead, and therefore do depend that I shall not go hence by ‘returning to the dust,’ which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a discharge: but that I shall make my exit by way of translation, which I claim as a dignity belonging to that Degree in the Science of Eternal Life of which I profess myself a graduate. And if after this I die like other men, I declare myself to die of no religion. Let no one be concerned for me as a desperade: I am not going to renounce the other part of our religion, but to add another article of faith to it, without which I cannot understand the rest. And if it be possible to believe too much in God, I desire to be guilty of that sin.
“Behold ye despisers and wonder! Wonder to see Paradise lost, with the Tree of Life in the midst of it! Wonder and curse at Adam for an original fool, who in the length of one day never so much as thought to put forth his hand, for him and us, and pull and eat and live for ever! Wonder at and damn ourselves for fools of the last impression, that in the space of seventeen hundred years never so much as thought to put forth our hands, every one for himself, and seal and execute the Covenant of Eternal Life.
“To be even with the World at once, he that wonders at my faith, I wonder at his unbelief. The Blood of Christ hath an incident quality which cleaneth from sin; and he that understands this never makes any use of his own personal virtues as an argument for his own salvation, lest God should overbalance against him with his sins; nor doth God ever object a man's sins to him in the day of his faith; therefore till I am more sinful than He was holy, my sins are no objection against my faith. And because in Him is all my hope, I care not (almost) what I am myself.
“It is observed in the mathematics that the practice doth not always answer the theory; and that therefore there is no dependence upon the mere notions of it as they lie in the brain, without putting them together in the form of a tool or instrument, to see how all things fit. This made me distrust my own thoughts till I had put them together, to see how they would look in the form of an argument. But in doing this, I thank God I have found every joint and article to come into its own place and fall in with and suit one another to a hair's breadth, beyond my expectation: or else I could not have had the confidence to produce this as an engine in Divinity to convey man from Earth to Heaven. I am not making myself wings to fly to Heaven with, but only making myself ready for that conveyance which shall be sent me. And if I should lose myself in this untrodden path of Life, I can still find out the beaten Road of Death blindfold. If therefore, after this, ‘I go the way of my fathers’ I freely waive that haughty epitaph, magnis tamen excidit ausis, and instead knock under table that Satan hath beguiled me to play the fool with myself, in which however he hath shewed his masterpiece; for I defy the whole clan of Hell to produce another lye so like to truth as this is. But if I act my motto, and go the way of an Eagle in the air, then have I played a trump upon Death and shewn myself a match for the Devil.