Chapter VII
A fourth sort of additional confirmations, drawn from the harmonies that are
between it and other divine truths.
I shall in the last place cast in some harmonies, or congruities and cor
respondencies, which this holds and makes up with other divine truths ; and
in such harmonies and concords, there is much of reason, at least to con
firm, if not demonstrate, truths in divinity.
1. To begin where I left. Hereby it comes to pass, that as the souls of men and other spirits were immediately made and created by God, who is
therefore in a peculiar respect, and with an opposite distinction to the fathers of our bodies, said to be the Father of spirits, and the God of the spirits of
all flesh, so that their last termination or end should be into and by his immediate hands also, this makes up a congruous and suitable dispensation. That look as they receive their first being from him, likewise they should return to him, as Ecclesiastes speaks, as to their sole and immediate author and
creator ; and so receive from him, as a Father of spirits, their portion at his immediate hands. And man s ultimate end, either way, is called their por
tion, Ps. xi. 6, Mat. xxiv. 51, whether it be in blessedness, as their inheri
tance out of his love, or misery as the wages of their sin. And thus hereby God himself is made the end, and the beginning or terminus, the Alpha and Omega of souls, to whom be glory for ever !
2. Thereby also there comes to pass an answerableness and a proportion held between the two conditions of heaven and hell, which the apostle seems
to make the ultimate aim and determination of God s counsels, unto which
all in this world are but preparations, as he calls them. Thus Bom. ix. 22, 23, for the shewing forth of his own immediate glory
: What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-
suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction : and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore
prepared unto glory?
3. And thirdly, also, it is said, that after that Christ the judge of all, hath
delivered up his administration and kingdom unto his Father, then God
should become all in all, 1 Cor. xv. 28 ; not in respect of being, that is, not as if the being of all things shall return into God again, as some have
wickedly dreamed, or that God s blessed being and the creatures should become one ; that can never be. It is a contradiction to say a creature made out of nothing should come to be of itself ; and such God in his being
CHAP. VIII.] IN RESPECT OF SIN AND PUNISHMENT. 525
is, but all in all in respect of immediate dispensation. And so look as to
the vessels of mercy, he will then be all in all, so that they shall not need
the light of the sun and the moon, &c. (that is, the comfort of any creature,
though all created excellencies in the spirit and quintessence of them shall be there), why should it not be also meant that the same God, which makes
up a parallel, seeing men s sins deserve it, shall be all in all in hell too, in a
contrary way to the other ?
4. And the rather this may be thought, because when God shall have
caused this visible world to pass away, the earth and the heavens we now
behold, as some judicious divines have inclined to think from Job xiv. 12, and other scriptures, either by turning them into nothing or into their first
chaos ; and so there being none, that is, of this old word left, but pure heaven and hell, which are as two spiritual places or worlds, and therein
these two sorts of creatures rational, either those who are wholly spirits, as
angels good and bad, or the spirits of men, whose bodies are raised spiritual and so fitted for that other kind of world, both of which are capable of
happiness or woe from him ; that then these two sorts of intelligent natures, God and they being left thus alone, the brutish part of the world being done
away, should have to do with him for ever immediately, either in a way of wrath or blessedness. And so God shall be all in all in ei her worlds ; and
this is to be the final ending and catastrophe of all. But these I urge not, but only mention.