The divine life in three treatises

2. The Eternity of God must draw the soul from Transitory, to Eternal things. It is an Everlasting blessedness, even the Eternal God, that our souls are made for▪ the Brutes are ⟨p. 29⟩made for a mortal happiness; The Immortal soul cannot be fully content with any thing that will have an end. As a capacity of this endless blessedness doth difference man from the beasts that perish; so the Disposition to it doth difference Saints from the ungodly; and the Fruition of it doth difference the Glorified from the damned. Alas what a silly thing were man if he were capable of nothing but these transitory things! What were our Lives worth, and what were our time worth, and what were all our mercies worth, or what were all the world worth to us, or what were we worth, our selves? I would not undervalue the works of God; but truly if man had no other life to live but this, I should esteem him a very contemptible creature. If you say that there's some excellency in the Brutes, I answer, True; but their usefulness is their chiefest excellency; And what is their use but to be a glass in which we may see the Lord, and to be serviceable to man in his passage to Eternity? They are not capable of Knowing, or Loving, or enjoying God themselves: but they are useful to man that is capable of this; and so they have an everlasting end, and this is their Excellency. And therefore the Atheist that denieth an everlasting life to man, doth bring himself into a far baser state then the brutes are in. For the brutes have an everlasting end, in promoting the happiness of man: But if man have no everlasting end himself, there is no other whose everlasting happiness he can promote. The unbeliever therefore doth debase his own soul and the whole creation: And faith and holiness advance the soul and all things with it, that are useful to our advancement. The true Believer honoureth his horse, his dog, his food and raiment, and the earth he treadeth on, and every creature, incomparably more than the Infidel doth honour his own or any others soul, or then he honoureth the greatest prince on earth. For the Believer useth all things, even the vilest in reference to Eternity; but the Infidel useth his life and soul but to a transitory end; and takes the greatest Prince on earth to be but for a transitory use.

2. The Eternity of God must draw the soul from Transitory, to Eternal things. It is an Everlasting blessedness, even the Eternal God, that our souls are made for the Bruits are