from Reason Reason, when awakened, it feels her own wounds, it hears her own jarrings, she sees the dimness of her own sight. 'Tis a glass that discovers its own spots, and must it, therefore, be broke in pieces? Reason herself has made many sad complaints unto you; she has told you often, and that with tears in her eyes, what a great shipwreck she has suffered, what goods she has lost, how hardly she escaped with a poor decayed being; she has shown you often some broken relics, as the sad remembrances of her former ruins; she told you how that when she swam for her life she had nothing but two or three jewels about her, two or three common notions; and would you rob her of them also? is this all your tenderness and compassion? is this your kindness to your friend? or is Reason thus offensive to them, because she cannot grasp and comprehend the things of God? Vain men, will they pluck out their eyes, because they cannot look upon the Sun in his brightness and glory? What though Reason cannot reach to the depths, to the bottoms of the Ocean, may it not, therefore, swim and hold up the head as well as it can? What though it cannot enter into the Sanctum Sanctorum, and pierce within the Veil; may it not, notwithstanding, lie in the Porch, at the gate of the Temple called beautiful, and be a door-keeper in the house of its God? though it be not a Jacob's ladder to climb up to heaven by, yet may they not use it as a staff to walk on earth withal? And then Reason itself knows this also, and acknowledges, that 'tis dazzled with the majesty and glory of God; that it cannot pierce into his mysterious

and unsearchable ways; it never was so vain as to go about to measure immensity by its own finite compass, or to span out absolute eternity by its own more imperfect duration. True Reason did never go about to comprise the Bible in its own Nutshell. And, if Reason be content with its own sphere, why should it not have the liberty of its proper motion.

The vigour and triumph of Reason is principally to be seen in those first-born beams, those pure and unspotted irradiations that shine from it; I mean those first bubblings up of common principles that are owned and acknowledged by all; and those evident and kindly derivations that flow from them.

We shall now see what this Candle of the Lord discovers; where we shall find that all the Moral Law is founded in natural and common light, in the light of ReaNathaniel Culverwel.

son.

The Light of Nature. - It will now be very needful to inquire what Nature is, and here we will be sure not to speak one word for Nature, which shall in the least measure tend to the eclipsing of Grace.

Well then, as for Nature, though it be not far from any one of us, though it be so intimate to our very beings; though it be printed and engraved upon our essences, and not upon ours only, but upon the whole Creation; and though we put all the letters and characters of it together, as well as we can, yet we shall find it hard enough to spell it out and read what it is; for as it is in corporeal

vision, the too much approximation and vicinity of an object does stop up and hinder sight, so 'tis also many times in Intellectual Optics; we see something better at a distance; the Soul cannot so easily see its own face, nor so fully explain its own nature.

Why Angelical beings should be banished from the Commonwealth of Nature; nay, why they should not properly belong to Physics, as well as other particular beings; or why bodies only should engross and monopolize natural Philosophy, and why a soul cannot be admitted into it, unless it bring a certificate and commendamus from the body, is a thing altogether unaccountable, unless it be resolved into a mere arbitrary determination, a Philosophical kind of Tyranny.

Souls, they move themselves, and they move bodies too, and, therefore, must needs be first in motion; so that Reason and Religion, Laws and Prudence, must needs be before density and rarity, before gravity and levity, before all conditions and dimensions of bodies. And Laws and Religion, they are, indeed, the contrivances and productions of that eternal wisdom of God himself. And first, 'tis the usual language of many, both Philosophers and others, to put Nature for God himself, or at least for that constant and Catholic Providence that spreads its wings over all created beings, and shrouds them under its warm and happy protection.

Thus God set up the world as a fair and goodly clock, to strike in time, and to move in an orderly manner, not by its own weights, but by fresh influence from himself, by

that inward and intimate spring of immediate concourse, that should supply it in a most uniform and proportionable

manner.

Thus God framed this great Organ of the world, he tuned it, yet not so as that it could play upon itself, or make any music by virtue of this general composure, but that it might be fitted and prepared for the finger of God himself, and, at the presence of his powerful touch, might sound forth the praise of its Creator in a most sweet and harmonious manner.

And thus Nature is that regular line which the wisdom of God himself has drawn in being, and that miscalled Fortune is nothing but a line fuller of windings and varieties; and as Nature is a fixed and ordinary kind of Providence, so Fortune is but a more abstruse, and mysterious, and occult kind of Providence. ib.

The Nature of a Law. Before we can represent unto you the Law of Nature, you must first frame and fashion in your minds the just notion of a Law in general. And this is sure, that a rational creature is capable only of a law which is a moral restraint, and so cannot reach to those things that are necessitated to act ad extremum virium. The golden chair of Laws, 'tis tied to the chair of God, and a command is only vigorous as it issues out, either immediately or remotely, from the great Sovereign of the world. The laws of God, they flow from a fountain of wisdom, and the laws of men are to be lighted at the Candle of the Lord, which he has set up in them; and

those laws are the most potent and prevalent that are founded in light. Other laws may have an iron and adamantine necessity, but these have a soft and downy per

suasion.

Even human laws have their virtue radicaliter et remote from the Eternal Law. As God is the most ancient of days, so is he the most ancient of laws; as he is the perfection of beings, so is he also the rule of operations. Laws are anointed by God himself, and most precious oil drops down upon them to the Skirts of a Nation; and the Law of Nature hath the oil of gladness poured out upon it above its fellows.

Lawgivers should send out laws with Olive-branches in their mouths; they should be fruitful and peaceable; they should drop sweetness and fatness upon a land. Let not then Brambles make laws for Trees, lest they scratch them, and tear them, and write their laws in blood. But lawgivers are to send out laws as the Sun shoots forth his beams, with healing under their wings.

A Law should be a staff for a Commonwealth to lean on, and not a Reed to pierce it through. Laws should be words of love, not nets and snares. ib.

The Law of Nature.

The Law of Nature is that Law which is intrinsical and essential to a rational creature; and such a Law is as necessary as such a creature; for such a creature, as a creature, has a Superior, to whose Providence and disposing it must be subject; and then, as an intellectual creature, 'tis capable of a moral