A discovery of divine mysteries, or, The nature and efficacy of the soul of man considered in all its faculties, operations and divine perfections, and how it governs in divine and secular affairs of life ... with many other curious matters : being a compleat body of divine and moral philosophy / by C.B., D.D., Fellow of the Royal Society.

which he conceives to be his Duty, until some Interest or some Passion rises up which opposes it; and there is no Man who doth not more or less resent the Satisfaction of having done his Duty, and the Pain of having fail'd in it, so long as Nature is Master of it self, and hath not at all been corrupted by the Habit and Corruption of Vice, which hardens it at last, and renders it insensible.

There is not a Perception or Sentiment so well marked in Nature as that is; from thence we have seen that there arise in Men two diverse Grounds equally admirable, a Ground of Vertue, and a Ground of Joys and Felicity, which bear a thousand Characters of a Nature not only Immaterial and Spiritual, but incontestably Celestial and Divine. It is from this natural Ground of Conscience, sup∣ported by Grace, that we have seen, and do yet see to issue Faithfulness, Integrity, Constancy, Magnanimity, Justice, Continence, Courage, Shunning of Pleasures, Patience in Labours, Victory over all the Passions, The effective accomplishment, and the inflexible and unsur∣mountable love of all Duties, Invincible to all Interests, and to all the Charms of Concu∣piscence, and Inexpugnable to the victorious force of the most delicate Temptations.

There is, to say truth, little of such Vertue in the World, because there are very few who do not suffer their Conscience to be subjugated to, and stifled by Concupiscence; but these

are two indubitable Experiences, That the Seeds and the Births, the Inclinations and the Principles of it are, together with the Idea and the Light of it in all Peoples Hearts, and that there are some People in whom all these Vertues are real, and mounted to a Sovereign degree of an invincible and constant love of Duty. Libertines would make us believe, That Ver∣tue is but a vain Name, and a fine Phantôme, with which the Imaginations of Men flatter and please themselves, but that it never had any Reality in the Hearts and in the Lives of Men. This Idea favours their Libertinism, and they would willingly establish it, to save them the shame and the reproach of their Disorders, which would appear to them excusable, if Duties were nothing but Chimera's, and Vertues but such Phantômes; but they cannot make good that Pretension, the World hath always had True Vertues in its greatest Corruption, and False and counterfeit Vertues have born witness to the Idea which is of them in Nature, which hath marked them with so sensible a Mark of Spirituality, and with so August and bright a Character of Divinity. Few Men have im∣prov'd the Seeds of Conscience so far as to the perfection of all Vertues, and all Duties; but there never was any Man, who hath not found in himself the Principles and the Seeds of Ver∣tues and Duties.

To which we must add the second Ground of Joys and Felicities, which have always ac∣company'd

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the former; for never did Man follow and practise Vertue, but he found in it a Ground of pure Joys, and unalterable and un∣corruptible Felicities; as on the contrary, never did any Man violate Conscience and Duty, but he found a Ground of Misery and Calamity in his own Heart, which was his Judge and his Executioner, and in his own Irregularity, which was his first Torment. The Nero's and the Domitians were not able neither with their Arms and Sovereign Power, under which they made the whole Universe tremble, neither with their obstinate determination to Evil, neither with their hardening and abandoning them∣selves to Crimes, to guard and defend them∣selves from the penetrating force of that Just and Imperious Power, which wounds impure and disorderly Souls with a thousand invisible Arrows, from whence springs a mortal Sad∣ness, and a mortal Pain.

That Conscience is not in the Soul of Man an Effect of Education, or of some Opinion with which it was imprinted and prepossess'd in the Infancy.

There are some, who, to deliver themselves from the pain which their Conscience gives them, and to abandon themselves to Disorder with more liberty and impunity, would per∣suade themselves, that all That which we call Conscience, is nothing but the Effects of certain

Opinions, with which our Infancy hath been prepossess'd, and imprinted upon by the Au∣thority, and by the Empire which our Educa∣tion hath exercis'd over us: But there is nothing in the World so foolish, so rash, and so insup∣portable; for Conscience is, without dispute, before Education, and is also independent of it for the Ground of its Idea, and of its Instinct of Good and Evil. It is true, that Education may prepossess the natural Ground of Conscience with some Opinions, and Opinions very false, which Superstition doth, and the Character which is call'd Scrupulous; but the Errors with which this natural Ground of Conscience may have been prepossess'd, do only invincibly prove the Ground of Conscience: For, as Teriullian says, if there was not in Nature an Idea of Good and Evil, it were impossible that one should err and deceive ones self, by the evil application of that Idea: If there was not an Idea of Good and Evil, one should never deceive himself by acknowledging for Good that which is Evil, and for Evil that which is Good, or that which is In∣different; all would have appear'd Indifferent, and above all, there would neither have been Certain Idea of Good and Evil, of which all Men are agreed, how different soever their Edu∣cation may be, and how opposite soever their Preposessions were, nor it would not be impossi∣ble to imprint what Idea one would of Good and Evil.

For if Conscience was not a thing natural in

Man, if Man had not a natural Idea, and a na∣tural love of Duty, one might then make Men thereupon believe all that one would, one might make them believe that Injustice, Ingratitude, and Treachery, are things commendable and estimable; and yet notwithstanding, nothing is more impossble: For as one can never make a Man believe that a Square hath but three Cor∣ners, and that Two and Two make Five; so one can never make him believe that Ingrati∣tude is an Ornament to the Nature of Man, that Injustice merits a Reward, that Treachery is a Vertue, an honest and commendable Quality; and on the contrary, that Justice, Fidelity, and Gratitude, are things condemnable and wicked. Men make Laws according to their Fancy, they establish them by Caprice and by Authority, they make themselves obey'd by the fear of Punishments, when they have the Power in their Hands; but it is remarkable, That Men who make Laws, and can make them∣selves be obey'd, cannot make themselves be∣lieve, but that when they only make unjust and tyrannical Laws, People only pay an exterior Obedience to their Commands, but the Heart and Spirit cries out and demands Justice from Him whom all Men naturally feel over their Heads, as a Protector of Justice, and an Aven∣ger of Oppression and unjust Authority.

We receive unjust Laws, but we do not be∣lieve them just for all that. But as to the na∣tural Laws of Duty and Conscience, all Men

receive them and believe them by an invinci∣ble determination of a superior Light, which equally perswades them alike. And this is the infallible Character of natural Idea and Light; for there is none but the natural Light that convinces us with that invincible force.

Conscience is then in us undoubtedly natu∣ral: And as certain as it is an essential Compa∣nion of our Nature, and a Propriety insepara∣ble from our Soul, from whence arise in us by the help of Grace, all Moral and Christian Vertues; so certain it is that our Souls are Spi∣ritual Natures, because it is impossible to con∣ceive, that a Corporeal Nature can be the Sub∣ject of Magnanimity, of Justice, of Fidelity, of Continence, and of Truth; and that a Cor∣poreal Nature can have either the Light of Order and of Duty, or the Inclination or the Determination of Duty, or the Pleasure of the performance, and the Pain of the violation of Duty. Duty, Order, Justice, have no Bodies, they are things totally Spiritual and Intelligi∣ble; how then can a Body, or a Corporeal Nature, have the Idea or the Sentiment of them?

Moreover this Light of Order and Duty which enlightens us, and which pierces us, and which we feel ingrafted, and as it were pour'd into our Soul, is not the Idea or the Rule of one single Duty, it is the Idea and the Rule of all our Actions, and by consequence, of a thousand sorts of Duties; so this is further a Certainty,

and an infallible Character of its Spiritua∣lity: For how can a Material and Corporeal thing be the Rule of so many diverse Actions, and so many different Duties? The only Name of Ruling Human Actions imports essentially the Idea of Spirituality: For with all my heart, let a Man make a Rule, a Square, and a Com∣pass of Gold, of Steel, and of what Matter he will, to measure out a Building, or the Com∣partments of a Garden or of a Walk; but how can one conceive a Corporeal Rule, let it be made of what Matter soever we can imagine, which can be proper to compass and put into order, and set to rights Human Actions?

The Rule is then indubitably Spiritual; and if this Rule is Spiritual, if this Idea of Duty, which enlightens us, cannot be Corporeal, our Soul, who is the Subject wherein it resides, can∣not but be a Spiritual Nature, because it is as impossible to conceive that a thing Spiritual can be within a Material Subject; as that a Material thing can be within a Spiritual Subject. It is infallible, That every thing that do's Spi∣ritual Acts, is Spiritual; and that every thing that is the Basis and the Subject of Spiritual Proprieties and Faculties, is all of it likewise Spiritual; because it is impossible that a Cor∣poreal Principle should produce Spiritual Acts, and that a Material Subject should be the Seat of a Spiritual Attribute, or of an Immaterial Perfection.

And this is it which ought to put a full end

to the Conviction which we have of our Spi∣ritual and Immortal Nature in our principal Part, which we call our Soul; since it is certain our Soul is not only the Principle of a thousand sorts of Spiritual Acts, (for every thing that is call'd Willing, Thinking, Reflecting, Judging, is essentially a Spiritual Act, because it is impos∣sible to conceive either Knowledge, or Will, or Desire and the Act of Willing, under a Cor∣poreal Image) but the Subject of a thousand Perfections, all Immaterial and Spiritual, if it were not but the Conscience alone, which as∣sisted by Grace, is in us the living Source and the Seat of Justice, of Fidelity, of Gratitude, of Friendship, of Constancy, of Magnanimity, of Truth, of Uprightness, of Incorruptibility, of an hundred sorts of Moral Vertues, and of an hundred sorts of Christian Vertues more Ex∣cellent than the Moral ones, of Humility, of Continence, of Despising, Misprising the World, of continual Union with God, of the Ardor of Eternity, of Mortification and of Self-denial, of an hundred such like Dispositions, all Cele∣stial and all Divine, which can have neither for Principle, nor for Subject, a Nature that is Corporeal.