38 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. communication. Hence Antonine, Seneca, and the rest of the stoics, thought that all the world was God, or one great animal, consisting of divine spirit and matter, as manof soul and body ; sometimes calling the supposed soul of the world God ; and some- times calling the whole world God; but still meaning that the universe was. but one spirit and body united, and that we all are parts of God, or of the body of God, or accidents, at least. And even the Popish mystical divines, in their pretensions to the highest perfection, say the same in sense ; such as Benedict. Anglus in his Regula Perfections, (approved by many, doctors,) who placed much of his supereminent life in our believing verily that there is nothing but God, as the beams are to the sun, and as the heat is to the fire; (which really is itself;) and so teaching us to rest in all things as good, as being nothing but God's essential will, which is himself, (resolving evenour sins and imperfections accord- ingly into God, so that they are God's or none.) And all these men have as fair. a pretense for the conceits of such an union with God now, as for such an uniomafter death: for their reason. is 1. That God being infinite, there can be no more beings than his own ; but God and the smallest being distinct, would be more. entity than God alone; but infinity can have no addition. 2. Because ens et bonum convertuntur; but God only is good. And if we are, notwithstanding all this, distinct beings from God now, we shall not be so advanced as to be deified, and of crea- tures, or distinct beings, turned into a being infinitély above us. If we be not parts of God now, we shall not be so then. But if they could prove that We are so now, we should quickly prove to them, 1. That then God bath material, divisible parts, as the stoics thought.) 2. And that we are no such parts, as are not distinct from one another; but some are tormented, and some happy. And, 3. That (as is said) it will be no abatement of the misery of the tormented, nor the felicity of the blessed, to tell them that theyare all parts of God ; for, though the manner of our union with him, and dependence on him, be past our compre- hension, yet that we are distinct and distant from each other, and have each one a joy or miseryof his own, is past all doubt. Therefore, there is no union with God to be feared by holy souls, but the utmost possible to be highliest desired. And if our union with God shall not ceaseour individuation, or re- solve us into a principle to be feared, we may say also ofour union with any common soul, or many : ifwe be unible, we are partible, and so have a distinct, though not a divided substance, which will have its proper accidents. All plants are parts of the eart)ai, really united to it, and radicated in it, and live and are nourished
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