John Suckling

“ Who knows but these unsightly parts shall remain for good use, and that, putting us in mind of our imperfect estate here, they shall serve to increase our content and happiness there? What kind of thing a glorified body shall be, how changed, how refined, who knows? Nor is it the meanest invitement to me now to think that my estate there is above my capacity here. There remains that which does not only quarrel with the likelihood of a resurrection, but with the possibility; alleging that man, corrupted into dust, is scattered almost into infinite, or devoured by an irrational creature ”

“ We have seen now the parallel; let us inquire whether those things they seem to have in common with us, we have not in a more excellent manner, and whether the rest, in which we differ from all the world, we take not up with reason. To begin, then, with their Jupiter (for all before were but little stealths from Moses' works) —how much more like a deity are the actions our stories declare our God to have done, than what the ethnick authors deliver of theirs? ”

“ For why should a created substance comprehend an uncreated; a circumscribed and limited, an uncircumscribed and unlimited? And this I observe in those great lovers and lords of reason, quoted by the fathers, Zoroastres, Trismegistus, Plato, Numenius, Plotinus, Proclus, Amelius, and Avicen, that when they spoke of this mystery of the Trinity, of which all writ something, and some almost as plainly as Christians themselves, that they discussed it not as they did other things, but delivered them as oracles which they had received themselves, without dispute. ”

“ I am not ignorant that the fear of Socinianism at this time renders every man, that offers to give an account of religion by reason, suspected to have none at all; yet I have made no scruple to run that hazard, not knowing why a man should not use the best weapon his Creator hath given him for his defence. ”

“ Now, for the Jews, as they had no hopes, so they had no fears; so that if we consider it rightly, neither their punishments were great enough to deter them from doing ill, nor their rewards high enough to invite men to strictness of life; for, since every man is able to make as good a heaven of his own, it were unreasonable to persuade him to quit that certain happiness for an uncertainty; whereas Christians, with as much more noble consideration both in their heaven and hell, took care not only for the body but the soul, and for both above man's apprehension. ”

“ So great has been the diversity, that some have almost thought God was no less delighted with variety in his service than he was pleased with it in his works. It would not be amiss to take a survey of the world from its cradle, and, with Varro, divide it into three ages—the Unknown, the Fabulous, and the Historical. ”

“ Now, as it is clear by authors impartial (as being no Christians) that strange things were done, so it is plain they were done without imposture. Delusions shun the light; these were all acted openly, the very enemies both of the Master and disciples daily looking on. But let us descend to those more principal particulars which so much trouble the curious wits: these I take to be the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Trinity.
For the first, that man should be made without man, why should we wonder more at it in that time of the world, than in the beginning? ”

“ And here the eye of reason needed no more the spectacles of faith, than for these things of which we make sympathy the cause, as in the load-stone, or antipathy, of which every man almost gives instance from his own nature ”

“ So, in man himself, the soul is in heaven when it remains in the flesh, for it reacheth with its eye the sun: why may not God then, being in heaven, be at the same time with us in the flesh? since the soul without the body would be able to do much more than with it, and God much more than the soul, being the soul of the soul. ”

“ That there should be a great Disposer and Orderer of things, a wise Rewarder and Punisher of good and evil, hath appeared so equitable to men, that by instinct they have concluded it necessary. Nature (which doth nothing in vain) having so far imprinted it in us all that, should the envy of predecessors deny the secret to succeeders, they yet would find it out. ”

“ On the contrary, our services are such as not only Cato, but God Himself, may be there: we worship Him that is the purest Spirit, in purity of spirit; and did we not believe what the Scriptures deliver from Himself, yet would our reason persuade us that such an essence could not be pleased with the blood of beasts, or delighted with the steam of fat; and in this particular Christians have gone beyond all others except the Mahometans, besides whom there has been no nation that had not sacrifice, and was not guilty of this pious cruelty.
That we have the same virtues with them is very true ”

“ Of all those little ladders with which we scale heaven, and climb up to our Maker, that seems to me not the worst, of which man is the first step. For but by examining how I, that could contribute nothing to mine own being, should be here, I come to ask the same question for my father, and so am led in a direct line to a last Producer, that must be more than man; for if man made man, why died not I when my father died? ”

“ Our religion teaches us to bear afflictions patiently when they fall upon us, but not to force them upon ourselves; for we believe the God we serve wise enough to choose His own service, and therefore presume not to add to His commands. With the Jews, it is true, we have something in common, but rather the names than things, our fasts being more the medicines of the body than the punishments of it ”

“ Porphyrius, having laid this foundation, that the supreme happiness of the soul is to see God, and that it cannot see Him unpurified, concludes that there must be a way for the cleansing of mankind; and proceeding to find it out, he tells that arts and sciences serve but to set our wits right in the knowledge of things, and cleanse us not enough to come to God. ”

“ And, indeed, had the fathers of the Church only bid men believe, and not told them why, they had slept now unsainted in their graves, and as much benighted with oblivion as the ordinary parish-priests of their own age.
That man is deceivable is true, but what part within him is not likelier than his reason? ”

“ The strangest, though most epidemical, disease of all religions has been an imagination men have had that the imposing painful and difficult things upon themselves was the best way to appease the Deity, grossly thinking the chief service and delight of the Creator to consist in the tortures and sufferings of the creature. How laden with chargeable and unnecessary ceremonies the Jews were, their feasts, circumcisions, sacrifices, great Sabbaths and little Sabbaths, fasts, burials, indeed almost all their worship, sufficiently declare ”

“ We then hold God to be one and but one, it being gross to imagine two Omnipotents, for then neither would be so; yet since this good is perfectly good, and perfect goodness cannot be without perfect love, nor perfect love without communication, nor to an unequal or created, for then it must be inordinate, we conclude a Second Coeternal, though Begotten; nor are these contrary (though they seem to be so) even in created substances, that one thing may come from another, and yet that, from whence it comes, not be before that which comes from it, as in the sun and light. ”

“ That humane nature may be assumed by a deity, the enemy of Christians, Julian, confirms, and instances (himself) in Æsculapius, whom he will have descend from heaven in mortal shape, to teach us here below the art of physick. Lastly, that God has lived with men, has been the general fancy of all nations, every particular having this tradition, that the Deity at some time or other conversed amongst men. ”

“ But, lest this discourse should swell into a greatness such as would make it look rather like a defence, which I have laboured to get, than an accompt which I always carry about me, I will now briefly examine whether we believe not with reason those things we have different from the rest of the world. ”

“ Or, if the first man gave himself being, why hath he it not still? since it were unreasonable to imagine anything could have power to give itself life, that had no power to continue it. That there is then a God, will not be so much the dispute, as what this God is, or how to be worshipped, is that which hath troubled poor mortals from the first ”

“ That in the first times men's lives lasted a thousand years, Berosus and others; that something divine was seen amongst men till that the greatness of our sins gave them cause to remove, Catullus; and this he that writes the story of Columbus reports from the Indians, of a great deluge, almost all. But to the main they hold one God; and though multiplicity hath been laid to their charge, yet certainly the clearer spirits understood these petty gods as things, not as deities: second causes, and several virtues of the great power: by Neptune, water ”

“ That a truly just man be shown (saith he) it is necessary that he be spoiled of his ornaments, so that he must be accounted by others a wicked man, be scoffed at, put in prison, beaten, nay, be crucified ”

“ Much easier, certainly, it was here, because nearer the natural way, woman being a more prepared matter than earth. Those great truths and mysteries of salvation would never have been received without miracles ”