You see it is still my Lot to travel into new Worlds, having never found
any great Satisfaction in this: As an active People leaves their
Habitations in a barren Soil, to try if they can make their Fortune
better elsewhere. I first look’d backwards, and waded through the
Deluge, into the primæval World, to see how they lived there, and how
Nature stood in that original Constitution. Now I am going forwards, to
view the new Heavens and new Earth, that will be after the
Conflagration. But, gentle Reader, let me not take you any farther, if
you be weary; I do not love a querulous Companion: Unless your Genius
therefore press you forwards, chuse rather to rest here, and be content
with that Part of the Theory which you have seen already. Is it not fair
to have followed Nature so far, as to have seen her twice in her Ruins?
Why should we still pursue her, even after Death and Dissolution, into
dark and remote Futurities? To whom therefore such Disquisitions seem
needless, or over-curious, let them rest here; and leave the Remainder
of this Work, which is a kind of PROPHECY concerning the STATE of things
after the Conflagration, to those that are of a Disposition suited to
such Studies and Enquiries.
Not that any part of this Theory requires much Learning, Art, or
Science, to be Master of it; but a Love and Thirst after Truth, Freedom
of Judgment, and a Resignation of our Understandings to clear Evidence.
Let it carry us which way it will, an honest English Reader, that looks
only at the Sense as it lies before him, and neither considers nor cares
whether it be new or old, so it be true, may be a more competent Judge
than a great Scholar full of his own Notions, and puffed up with the
Opinion of his mighty Knowledge; for such Men think they cannot in
Honour own any thing to be true, which they did not know before. To be
taught any new Knowledge, is to confess their former Ignorance; and that
lessens them in their own Opinion, and, as they think, in the Opinion of
the World, which are both uneasy Reflections to them. Neither must we
depend upon Age only for Soundness of Judgment: Men in discovering and
owning Truth seldom change their Opinions after threescore, especially
if they be leading Opinions: It is then too late, we think, to begin the
World again, and as we grow old, the Heart contracts, and cannot open
wide enough to take in a great Thought.
The Spheres of Mens Understandings are as different, as Prospects upon
the Earth: Some stand upon a Rock or a Mountain, and see far round
about; others are in an Hollow, or in a Cave, and have no Prospect at
all. Some Men consider nothing but what is present to their Senses;
others extend their Thoughts both to what is past, and what is future:
And yet the fairest Prospect in this Life is not to be compar’d to the
least we shall have in another. Our dearest Day here is misty and hazy;
we see not far, and what we do see, is in a bad Light: But when we have
got better Bodies in the first Resurrection, whereof we are going to
treat; better Senses and a better Understanding, a clearer Light and an
higher Station, our Horizon will be enlarged every Way, both as to the
natural World, and as to the intellectual.
Two of the greatest Speculations that we are capable of in this Life,
are, in my Opinion, The REVOLUTION OF WORLDS, and the REVOLUTION OF
SOULS; one for the material World, and the other for the intellectual.
Toward the former of these, our Theory is an Essay; and in this our
Planet, (which I hope to conduct into a fixed Star, before I have done
with it) we give an Instance of what may be in other Planets. ’Tis true,
we took our Rise no higher than the Chaos, because that was a known
Principle, and we were not willing to amuse the Reader with too many
strange Stories; as that, I am sure would have been thought one, TO HAVE
brought this Earth from a fixed Star, and then carried it up again into
the same Sphere; which yet, I believe, is the true Circle of natural
Providence.
As to the Revolution of Souls, the Footsteps of that Speculation are
more obscure than of the former; for though we are assur’d by Scripture,
that all good Souls will at length have cœlestial Bodies; yet, that this
is a returning to a primitive State, or to what they had at their first
Creation, that Scripture has not acquainted us with: It tells us indeed,
that Angels fell from their primitive cœlestial Glory; and consequently
we might be capable of a Lapse as well as they, if we had been in that
high Condition with them; but that we ever were there, is not declared
to us by any Revelation. Reason and Morality would indeed suggest to us,
that an innocent Soul, fresh and pure from the Hands of its Maker, could
not be immediately cast into Prison, before it had, by any Act of its
own Will, or any Use of its own Understanding, committed either Error or
Sin. I call this Body a Prison, both because it is a Confinement and
Restraint upon our best Faculties and Capacities, and is also the Seat
of Diseases and Loathsomness; and, as Prisons use to do, commonly tends
more to debauch Mens Natures, than to improve them.
But though we cannot certainly tell under what Circumstances human Souls
were plac’d at first, yet all Antiquity agrees, Oriental and Occidental,
concerning their Præ-existence in general, in Respect of these mortal
Bodies: And our Saviour never reproaches or corrects the Jews, when they
speak upon that Supposition, Luke ix. 18, 19. John ix. 2. Besides, it
seems to me beyond all Controversy, that the Soul of the Messiah did
exist before the Incarnation, and voluntarily descended from Heaven to
take upon it a mortal Body. And though it does not appear that all human
Souls were at first placed in Glory, yet, from the Example of our
Saviour, we see something greater in them; namely, a Capacity to be
united to the Godhead, John iii. 13. and vi. 38. and 62. and xvii. 5.
And what is possible to one, is possible to more. But these Thoughts are
too high for us, while we find our selves united to nothing but diseased
Bodies and Houses of Clay.
The greatest Fault we can commit, in such speculations, is to be over
positive and dogmatical: To be inquisitive into the Ways of Providence
and the Works of God, is so far from being a Fault that it is our
greatest Perfection: We cultivate the highest Principles and best
Inclinations of our Nature, while we are thus employ’d; and ’tis
Littleness or Secularity of Spirit, that is the greatest Enemy to
Contemplation. Those that would have a true Contempt of this World, must
suffer the Soul to be sometimes upon the Wing, and, to raise herself
above the Sight of this little dark Point, which we now inhabit. Give
her a large and free Prospect of the Immensity of Gods Works, and of his
inexhausted Wisdom and Goodness, if you would make her great and good;
as the warm Philosopher says,
Give me a Soul so great, so high,
Let her Dimensions stretch the Sky;
That comprehends within a Thought,
The whole Extent, ’twixt God and Nought;
And from the World’s first Birth and Date,
Its Life and Death can calculate,
With all th’ Adventures that shall pass,
To ev’ry Atom of the Mass.
But let her be as GOOD as GREAT,
Her highest Throne a Mercy-Seat;
Soft and dissolving like a Cloud,
Losing herself in doing Good;
A Cloud that leaves its Place Above,
Rather than dry and useless move,
Falls in a Shower upon the Earth,
And gives ten thousand Seeds a Birth;
Hangs on the Flow’rs, and infant Plants,
Sucks not their Sweets, but feeds their Wants:
So let this mighty Mind diffuse,
All that’s her own to others Use;
And, free from private Ends, retain
Nothing of SELF, but a bare Name.
BOOK IV.
_Concerning the New Heavens and New Earth, AND Concerning the
Consummation of all Things._