CHAPTER I.

_Treating of some matters preparatory to the |Spirit| of |Prayer|._

*THE greatest part of mankind, nay of Christians, may be said to be asleep; and that particular way of life, which takes up each man’s mind, thoughts, and actions, may well be called his particular dream. This degree of vanity is equally visible in every form and order of life. The learned and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, are all in the same state of slumber; only passing away a short life in a different kind of dream. But why so? It is because man is born into this world, not for the sake of living here, not for any thing this world can give him, but only to have time and place, to become either an eternal partaker of a divine life with God, or to have a hellish eternity amongst fallen angels: and therefore, every man who has not his eyes, his heart, and his hands, continually governed by this twofold eternity, may be justly said to be fast asleep. And a life devoted to the interests and enjoyments of this world, spent and wasted in the slavery of earthly desires, may be truly called a dream, as having all the shortness, vanity, and delusion of a dream; only with this great difference, that when a dream is over, nothing is lost but fictions and fancies: but when the dream of life is ended _only_ by death, all that eternity is lost, for which we were brought into being. Now there is no misery in this world, nothing that makes either the life or death of man to be full of calamity, but this blindness and insensibility of his state, into which he so willingly, nay obstinately plunges himself. Every thing that has the nature of evil and distress in it, takes its rise from hence. Do but suppose a man to know himself; that he comes into this world on no other errand, but to rise out of the vanity of time into the riches of eternity; do but suppose him to govern his inward thoughts and outward actions by this view of himself, and then to him every day has lost all its evil; prosperity and adversity hath no difference, because he receives and uses them both in the same spirit; life and death are equally welcome, because equally parts of his way to eternity. For poor and miserable as this life is, we have all of us free access to all that is great and good, and happy; and carry within ourselves a _key_ to all the treasures that heaven has to bestow upon us. We starve in the midst of plenty, groan under infirmities, with the remedy in our own hand: live and die, without knowing and feeling any thing of the _one, only good_, whilst we have it our power to know and enjoy it in as great a reality, as we know and feel the power of this world over us: for heaven is as near to our souls, as this world is to our bodies; and we are created, we are redeemed, to have our conversation in it. God, the only _good_ of all intelligent natures, is not an absent or distant God, but is more present _in_ and _to_ our souls, than our own bodies: and we are strangers to heaven, and without God in the world, for this only reason, because we are void of that spirit of prayer, which alone can unite us with the one good and open heaven, and the kingdom of God within us. A root set in the finest soil, in the best climate, and blessed with all that sun, and air, and rain can do for it, is not in so sure a way to perfection, as a man whose spirit aspires after all that, which God is ready and infinitely desirous to give him. For the _sun_ meets not the springing-bud that stretches towards him, with half that certainty, as God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.

We are all of us the offspring of God, more nearly related to him, than we are to one another: for _in him we live, and move, and have our being_. The first man that was brought forth from God, had the Spirit of _Father, Son, and Holy Ghost_ breathed into him, and so he became a living soul. Thus was our first father born of God, and stood in paradise in the image and likeness of God. He was the image and likeness of God, not with regard to his outward shape, for no shape has any likeness to God; but because the Holy Trinity had breathed their own nature and Spirit into him. And as the Deity, _Father_, _Son_, and _Holy Spirit_, are always in heaven, and make heaven to be every where; so this Spirit, breathed by them into man, brought heaven into man along with it; and so man was in heaven, as well as on earth, that is, in paradise, which signifies an heavenly state.

_Adam_ had all that divine nature, which angels have: But as he was brought forth to be a lord, and ruler of a new world; so it was necessary that he should also have the material nature of this new created world in himself. His body was the _medium_ or _means_ thro’ which he was to have commerce with this world, become visible to its creatures, and rule over it and them. Thus stood our first father; an angel as to his spirit; yet dwelling in a body taken from this new created world; which however was as inferior to him, as subject to him, as the earth and all its creatures were.