room for grief, it would have moved according to the severe allowances
of prudence, and the proportions of the provocation. It would not have
sallied out into complaint of loudness, nor spread itself upon the
face, and writ sad stories upon the forehead. No wringing of hands,
knocking the breast, or wishing oneself unborn; all which are but the
ceremonies of sorrow, the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate grief,
which speak not so much the greatness of the misery as the smallness
of the mind! Tears may spoil the eyes, but not wash away the
affliction. Sighs may exhaust the man, but not eject the burden.
Sorrow, then, would have been as silent as thought, as severe as
philosophy. It would have been rested in inward senses, tacit
dislikes; and the whole scene of it been transacted in sad and silent
reflections....
And, lastly, for the affection of fear: It was then the instrument of
caution, not of anxiety; a guard, and not a torment to the breast that
had it. It is now indeed an unhappiness, the disease of the soul: it
flies from a shadow, and makes more dangers than it avoids; it weakens
the judgment and betrays the succors of reason: so hard is it to
tremble and not to err, and to hit the mark with a shaking hand. Then
it fixt upon Him who is only to be feared, God; and yet with a filial
fear, which at the same time both fears and loves. It was awe without
amazement, dread without distraction. There was then a beauty even in
this very paleness. It was the color of devotion, giving a luster to
reverence and a gloss to humility.
Thus did the passions then act without any of their present jars,
combats, or repugnances; all moving with the beauty of uniformity
and the stillness of composure; like a well-governed army, not for
fighting, but for rank and order. I confess the Scripture does not
expressly attribute these several endowments to Adam in his first
estate. But all that I have said, and much more, may be drawn out of
that short aphorism, "God made man upright." And since the opposite
weaknesses infest the nature of man fallen, if we will be true to the
rules of contraries we must conclude that these perfections were the
lot of man innocent....
Having thus surveyed the image of God in the soul of man, we are not
to omit now those characters of majesty that God imprinted upon the
body. He drew some traces of His image upon this also, as much as a
spiritual substance could be pictured upon a corporeal. As for the
sect of the Anthropomorphites, who from hence ascribe to God the
figure of a man, eyes, hands, feet, and the like, they are too
ridiculous to deserve a confutation. They would seem to draw this
impiety from the letter of the Scripture sometimes speaking of God in
this manner. Absurdity! as if the mercy of Scripture expressions ought
to warrant the blasphemy of our opinions; and not rather to show us
that God condescends to us only to draw us to Himself; and clothes
Himself in our likeness only to win us to His own. The practise of
the papists is much of the same nature, in their absurd and impious
picturing of God Almighty; but the wonder in them is the less since
the image of a deity may be a proper object for that which is but
the image of a religion. But to the purpose: Adam was then no less
glorious in his externals; he had a beautiful body, as well as an
immortal soul. The whole compound was like a well-built temple,
stately without, and sacred within. The elements were at perfect union
and agreement in His body; and their contrary qualities served not for
the dissolution of the compound, but the variety of the composure.
Galen, who had no more divinity than what his physic taught him,
barely upon the consideration of this so exact frame of the body,
challenges any one, upon a hundred years' study, to find out how any
the least fiber, or most minute particle, might be more commodiously
placed, either for the advantage of use or comeliness. His stature
erect, and tending upward to his center; his countenance majestic
and comely, with the luster of a native beauty that scorned the poor
assistance of art or the attempts of imitation; His body of so much
quickness and agility that it did not only contain but also represent
the soul; for we might well suppose that where God did deposit so rich
a jewel He would suitably adorn the case. It was a fit workhouse for
sprightly, vivid faculties to exercise and exert themselves in; a
fit tabernacle for an immortal soul, not only to dwell in, but to
contemplate upon; where it might see the world without travel, it
being a lesser scheme of the creation, nature contracted a little
cosmography or map of the universe. Neither was the body then subject
to distempers, to die by piecemeal, and languish under coughs,
catarrhs, or consumptions. Adam knew no disease so long as temperance
from the forbidden fruit secured him. Nature was his physician, and
innocence and abstinence would have kept him healthful to immortality.
The two great perfections that both adorn and exercise man's
understanding, are philosophy and religion: for the first of these,
take it even among the professors of it where it most flourished, and
we shall find the very first notions of common-sense debauched by
them. For there have been such as have asserted, "that there is no
such thing in the world as motion: that contradictions may be true."
There has not been wanting one that has denied snow to be white. Such
a stupidity or wantonness had seized upon the most raised wits that it
might be doubted whether the philosophers or the owls of Athens
were the quicker sighted. But then for religion; what prodigious,
monstrous, misshapen births has the reason of fallen man produced!
It is now almost six thousand years that far the greater part of the
world has had no other religion but idolatry: and idolatry certainly
is the first-born of folly, the great and leading paradox, nay, the
very abridgment and sum total of all absurdities. For is it not
strange that a rational man should worship an ox, nay, the image of an
ox? That he should fawn upon his dog? Bow himself before a cat? Adore
leeks and garlic, and shed penitential tears at the smell of a deified
onion? Yet so did the Egyptians, once the famed masters of all arts
and learning. And to go a little further, we have yet a stronger
instance in Isaiah, "A man hews him down a tree in the wood, and a
part of it he burns, with the residue thereof he maketh a god." With
one part he furnishes his chimney, with the other his chapel. A
strange thing that the fire must first consume this part and then burn
incense to that. As if there was more divinity in one end of the
stick than in the other; or, as if he could be graved and painted
omnipotent, or the nails and the hammer could give it an apotheosis!
Briefly, so great is the change, so deplorable the degradation of our
nature, that whereas we bore the image of God, we now retain only the
image of man.
In the last place, we learn hence the excellency of Christian
religion, in that it is the great and only means that God has
sanctified and designed to repair the breaches of humanity, to set
fallen man upon his legs again, to clarify his reason, to rectify his
will, and to compose and regulate his affections. The whole business
of our redemption is, in short, only to rub over the defaced copy of
the creation, to reprint God's image upon the soul, and, as it were,
to set forth nature in a second and fairer edition; the recovery of
which lost image, as it is God's pleasure to command, and our duty to
endeavor, so it is in His power only to effect; to whom be rendered
and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and
dominion, both now and forever more. Amen.
END OF VOL. II.