The nets of salvation. A brief essay, upon the glorious designs & methods of…

We shall try to come to what we would be at, by these Advances.

1. There is One Thing to be laid in the Foundation of all that we have to say or to do; Tis a most granted Preliminary, That •here are Souls, Even Rational and Immortal Souls, in the Children of men: Souls, the Eternal welfare whereof, is the First Thing •o be Consulted by the Children of Men. That man is indeed not worthy the Name of a Man, who doubts whether he has a Soul distinct from his Body. His very Doubt is a Confutation of his Doubt; For, mere Body should never form a Doubt. All Dubitation is […] peculiar Prerogative of Intellectual Mind. We find this Anatomy of man, at his Compo•tion; Gen. 2. 7. The Dust of the Ground, and, […] Living Soul. We find this Division of man, at ••is Dissolution; Eccl. 12. 7. The Dust returns […] the Earth, and, The Spirit returns to God. Thy Body, O man, tho' it be Curiously & Wonderfully made, yet it is but the Cabinet of a far more Curious, and Wonderful, and Valuable […]. A Soul, a Soul, with which if the Body •e laid in the Balance, verily, the Body, with all the Interests of it, will be found more light •han the Dust of the Balance. Man is not all Body, tho' in our English Language, a Person ⟨p. 6⟩is called, a Body. No, There is a spirit in man. There is Lodged in our Body, and Vitally United unto it, a more spiritual Substance, Endued with the Faculties of Thinking, and Knowing, and Willing, and Affecting an Umon with an Humane Body. The Oracles of God, Evidently distinguish between our Spirit and our Flesh; The Father of One, is not the Father of the Other; The one may be out of the other, and without the other; nor is the Fate of the one, the Fate of the other. When the Body Expires, the Soul yet Survives. The strange presage which the Soul often has, of its leaving the Body within such or such a Time, and this Presage with a strange Exactness accomplished; This one thing, if there were no more, is an Ungainsayable, an Irrefragable Demonstration, That the Soul out-lives the Body. But more than this, The Creator and Redeemer of the Soul, has given us to understand,