APPENDIX. 209 can have no desires of it, and no delightful hope. What can we conceive of more certainly than of life, and Iight, and love; of a region, and of persons essentiated of these ? Do we not know what knowledge is, and see what light is, and feel what life and love are ? But it istrue, that our conceptions hereofare lamentably imperfect; and so they must be till possession, fruition, and exercise, perfect them. Who knoweth what light or sight is, but by seeing; or *hat knowledge is, but byknowing; or what love and joy are, but by love and rejoicing? And who knows what perfect sight, knowl- edge, love and joy are, but by perfect seeing, knowing, loving, and rejoicing? No man, by an intuitive or immediate perception. But some abstractive conceptions of it we may have by reasoning deduction from that poor degree which we here, in the kingdom of grace, possess. Can I perceive substantiality in the dark, terrene appearances, which are but mutable, lifeless matter, agitated and used by invisible powers; and shall I think of those unseen, powerful substances, as if they were less substantial for being spiritual, or were not objects for aknowing thought ? Are the stars, which Isee, less substantial than a carcass in a darksome grave ? The Lord that appeared in shin- ing glory hath members, in their measure, like himself; and bath promised that we shall shine as stars in thekingdom of his Father. If some degree of this be here performed in themwho are called the children of light, and the lights of the world, how much ,more will they shine in the world of light! They that call light a qual- ity, or an act, must confess it bath a substance whose quality or act it is. Alas ! what a deceived thing is a sensual unbeliever, who spendeth his life in the pursuit of fugitive shadows, and walketh in a vain show, and thinks of spiritual, glorious substances, as if they were the nothings or delusions of a dream ! 7. Christ, Moses, and Elias, here visibly appeared as three dis- tinct, individual persons. This tells us that it is a false conceit that death ceaseth individuation, and turneth all souls into one, (of which before :) perfect, indivisible, infinite unity is proper to God : from this one is multiplicity. Reason forbids us, when we see the numberless individuals in this world, and see, also, the nu- merous stars above, to imagine that all the worlds above us have so muchof divine perfection, as to bebut one undivided substance, and to have no multiplicity of inhabitants. . Yea, some of those Sadducees hold that the stars are worlds inhabited, as the earth is. And why, then, should they think whithersoever souls go, that they cease their individuation, when they go among individuals? But Christ hath confuted them, even to sense. Moses is Moses still, and Elias is Elias still; and all our friends that aregone to VOL. II. 27
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