Where be which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the air? all the atoms of that flesh, which a corrosive hath eat away, or a consumption hath breathed, and exhaled away from our arms, and other limbs? In what wrinkle, in what furrow, in what bowel of the earth, lie all the grains of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since? In what corner, in what ventricle of the sea, lies all the jelly of a body drowned in the general flood? what coherence, what sympathy, what dependence maintains any relation, any correspondence, between that arm which was lost in Europe, and that leg, that was lost in Africa or Asia, scores of years between? One humour of our dead body produces worms, and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour, and then all dies, and all dries, and moulders into dust, and that dust is blown into the river, and that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebbs and flows in infinite revolutions, and still, still God knows in what cabinet every seed-pearl lies, in what part of the world every grain of every man's dust lies; and sibilat populum suum, (as his prophet speaks in another case') he whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints, and in the twinkling of an eye, that body that was scattered over all the elements, is sat down at the right hand of God, in a glorious resurrection. A dropsy hath extended me to an enormous corpulency, and unwieldiness; a consumption hath attenuated me to a feeble macilency and leanness, and God raises me a body, such as it should have been, if these infirmities had not intervened and deformed it. David could go no further in his book of Psalms, but to that, Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord; Ye, says he, ye that have breath, praise ye the Lord, and that ends the book: but, that my dead body should come to praise the Lord, this is that new song, which I shall learn, and sing in heaven; when not only my soul shall magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoice in God my Saviour; but I shall have mine old eyes, and ears, and tongue, and knees, and receive such glory in my body myself, as that, in that body, so glorified by God, I also shall glorify him. So very a body, so perfectly a body shall we have there, as that Mahomet, and his followers, could not consist in those heavenly functions of the body, in glorifying God, but mis imagine a feasting and banqueting, and all carnal pleasures of the body in heaven too. But there Christ stops; a resurrection there shall be, but, in the resurrection we shall not marry, &c. They shall not marry, because they shall have none of the uses of marriage; not as marriage is physic against inordinate affections; for every soul shall be a consort in itself, and never out of tune; not as marriage is ordained for mutual help of one another; for God himself shall be entirely in every soul; and what can that soul lack, that hath all God? Not as marriage is a second and a suppletory eternity, in the continuation and propagation of children; for they shall have the first eternity, individual eternity in themselves. Therefore does St. Luke assign that reason why they shall not marry, because they cannot die". Because they have an eternity in themselves, they need not supply any defect, by a propagation of children. But yet, though Christ exclude that, of which there is clearly no use in heaven, marriage, (because they need no physic, no mutual help, no supply of children, yet he excludes, not our knowing, or our loving of one another upon former knowledge in this world, in the next; Christ does not say expressly we shall, yet neither does he say, that we shall not, know one another there. Neither can we say, we shall not, because we know not how we should. Adam, who was asleep when Eve was made, and neither saw, nor felt any thing that God had done, knew Eve upon the very first sight, to be bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. By what light knew he this? And in the transfiguration of Christ, Peter, and James, and John knew Moses and Elias, and by what light knew they them, whom they had never seen? Nor can we, or they, or any, be imagined to have any degree of knowledge of persons, or actions, though but occasionally, and transiently, in this life, which we shall not have inherently, and permanently in the next. In the types of the general resurrection, which were particular resuscitations of the dead in this world, the dead were restored to the knowledge of their friends: when Christ raised the son of the widow of Nain, he delivered him to his mother; when Peter raised Tabitha, he called the saints and the widows, and presented her alive unto them. So God says to Luke xx, 35. 7 Gen, ii. 23. 8 Matt. xvii. 3. Abraham, Ibis ad patres, Thou shalt go to thy fathers'; he should know that they were his fathers: so to Moses, Jungeris populis tuis, Thou shalt die, and be gathered to thy people, as Aaron thy brother died, and was gathered to his people. John Baptist had a knowledge of Christ, though they were both in their mothers' wombs"; and Dives of Lazarus, though in hell1; and it is not easily told, by what light these saw these. Whatsoever conduces to God's glory, or our happiness, we shall certainly know in heaven: and he that in a rectified conscience believes that it does so, may piously believe that he shall know them there. In things of this nature, where no direct place of Scripture binds up thy faith, believe so, as most exalts thine own devotion; yet with this caution too, not to condemn uncharitably, and peremptorily, those that believe otherwise. A resurrection there shall be in the resurrection there shall be no marriage, because it conduces to no end; but, if it conduce to God's glory, and my happiness, (as it may piously be believed it does) to know them there, whom I knew here, I shall know them. Now from this, in the resurrection they marry not, flows this also, till the resurrection they do, they may, they shall marry. Nay, in God's first purpose and institution, they must: for God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. Every man is a natural body, every congregation is a politic body; the whole world is a catholic, an universal body. For the sustentation and aliment of the natural body, man, God hath given meat; for the politic, for societies, God hath given industry, and several callings; and for the catholic body, for the sustentation, and reparation of the world, God hath given marriage. They that scatter themselves in various lusts, commit waste, and shall undergo at last, a heavy condemnation, upon that action of waste in their souls, as they shall feel it before in their bodies which they have wasted. They that marry not, do not keep the world in reparation; and the common law, the law of nature, and the general law of God binds man in general to that reparation of the world, to marriage: for continency is privilegium, a privilege; that is, privata lex; when it is given, it becomes a law too; for he to whom God gives 9 Gen. xv. 15. 11 Luke i. 41. 10 Deut. xxxii. 50. 13 Gen. ii. 18. the gift of continency, is bound by it: it is privata lex, a law, an obligation upon that particular man; and then privilegium, is privatio legis, it is a dispensation upon that law, which without that privilege, and dispensation would bind him; so that all those, who have not this privilege, this dispensation, this continency, by immediate gift from God, or other medicinal disciplines, and mortifications, (which disciplines and mortifications, every state and condition of life is not bound to exercise, because such mortifications as would overcome their concupiscences, would also overcome all their natural strength, and make them unable to do the works of their callings) all such are bound by the general law to marry. For, from nature, and her law, we have that voice, Ut gignamus geniti; Man is born into the world, that others might be born from him: and from God's general law, we have that voice, crescite and multiplicamini: therefore God placed man here, that he might repair and furnish the world. He is gone at common law that marries not: not but that he may have relief; but it is only in conscience, and by way of equity, and as in chancery; that is, if in a rectified conscience he know, that he should be the less disposed to religious offices, for marriage, he does well to abstain: otherwise he must remember that the world is one body, and marriage the aliment, that the world is one building, and marriage the reparation. Therefore the emperor Augustus did not only increase the rewards, and privileges which former laws had given to married persons, but he laid particular penalties upon them, that lived unmarried. And though that state seem to have countenanced single life, because they afforded dignities to certain vestal virgins, yet the number of those vestals was small, not above six, and then the dignities and privileges, which those vestals had, were no other, but that they were made equal in the state to married wives; they were preferred before all that lived unmarried, but not before married persons. This fortification and rampart of the world, marriage, hath the devil battered with most artillery, opposed with most instruments: for, as an army composed of many nations, more sects of heretics have concurred in the condemning of marriage, than in any one heresy. The Adamites, the Tatians, and those whom Irenæus calls the Encratites; all within two hundred years after Christ; and more after. And yet God kept such a hook in the nostril of this leviathan, such a bridle in the jaws of these sects of heretics, as that never any of them so opposed marriage, as that they justified incontinency, or various lust, or indifferency, or community in that kind. Now as in the Pelagian heresy, those that came to modify and mollify that heresy, and to be semiPelagians, were in some points worse than those that were full Pelagians, (as truly, in many cases, the half Papist may do more harm, and be more dangerous, than the whole Papist that declares himself) so the semi-Adamites, the semi-Tatians, and semi-Encratites of the Roman church, who, though they do not as those whole heretics did, condemn marriage entirely, yet they condemn it in certain persons, and in so many as constitute a great part of the body of mankind, that is, in all their clergy, exceed those very heretics, in favour of incontinency, and fornication, and various lusts, which those heretics who absolutely condemned marriage, condemned too, as absolutely; whereas in the Roman church a Jesuit tells us, that there are divers catholics of that opinion, That it is not heresy to say, That fornication is no deadly sin": and yet it is heresy to say, That marriage in some persons, (only disabled by their canons) is not deadly sin. And when they erect and justify their academies of incontinency, and various lust, various even in the sex, if some authors among themselves have not injured them) when they maintain public stews, and maintain their dignity by them, and make that a part of the revenue of the church, what advocate of theirs can deny, but that these semi-Adamites, semi-Tatians, semi-Encratites, are worse than those heretics themselves, that did absolutely oppose marriage? We depart absolutely from those old heretics, who did absolutely condemn marriage; and from those later men, who though they be but semi-heretics in respect of them, because they limit their forbidding of marriage, to certain persons, yet they are sequi-heretics in this, that they countenance incontinency, and fornication, which those very heretics abhorred; and we must have leave too, (which we are always loath to do) to depart from the rigidness of some of those blessed fathers of the Primitive church, who found some necessities in their times, to speak 14 Lorinus. Acts xv. 20. |