DISCOURSE XXXII.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN.

PSALM VIII. 5.

Thou hast made him but a little lower than the angels.

ALTHOUGH these words, and what follow in the three next verses, are, in their more important meaning, to be understood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and accordingly are by St. Paul applied to him in the Epistle to the Hebrews; yet are they as applicable, in their first, simple, and immediate sense, to man in general. It is plain, David had the infirmity, and the seeming insignificance of human nature under consideration, at the uttering these words of the same psalm: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?'

But he is comforted again, when he reflects, that God hath made man only a little lower than the angels; that he hath crowned him with glory and honour;' and that he hath, by the prerogative bestowed on him, as a reasonable creature, in the first of Genesis, 'given him dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every thing that moveth upon the earth.'

The words of my text, together with those that follow, thus understood, shew us, what reason and observation also render probable, that man is placed in the middle, between the angelic and brutal nature, being a little lower than the former, and at the same time holding dominion over the latter.

It is a thing very remarkable, that all the orders of created beings, known to us, form a kind of scale or chain, wherein the lower is always linked to that above, by somewhat common to the nature of both. The nature and qualities of lifeless matter are found in plants; the vegetable life of plants, in brutes; the senses, appetites, and affections

of brutes in man; and the reasoning faculty of man, in angels. That this communion of natures ascends still higher than we can possibly trace it, is very probable; since, so far as we are able to pursue it, no breach nor interruption can be discovered; and since, in holy Scripture, a certain distinction of order and dignity among created beings, of a class superior to our own, seems plainly enough pointed out to us by the terms angels, archangels, principalities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim, which had never been used in the same sentence, and immediately following one another, had it not been the intention of the Holy Spirit to express to us some distinction or subordination in these superior creatures.

With this chain, or gradation of created beings, there seems to be joined a certain progress of each, at least for a few links, from lower to higher, or the contrary; a rise from the class below, to the excellence of that above; or a fall from the class above, to the insignificance and baseness of that below. This we may observe, in matter, for instance, which rises from dead earth to plants; from plants to animals; or sinks from the bodies of animals into plants, and afterward, upon the dissolution of those plants, rots, and is reduced to common dirt. That there is a like improvement or degeneracy in the world of spirits is most highly probable, and the rather, as every man may observe somewhat like it in himself; for we are never at a stand, but always ascending to a greater perfection in virtue, or descending to grosser acts of vice and wickedness.

Man borrows one half of his nature from creatures of a superior, and the other, from creatures of an inferior order; and, thus compounded, links together the chain of beings by standing between the angel and the brute, and bearing an equal relation to both. He hath, in common with the first, a reasonable soul, which may render him a free, a moral, and a religious being; and he hath, in common with the last, an animal body, with senses, passions, and appetites, that may engage him in gross and brutal pollutions. So far as he is a spiritual being, he may aspire, through virtue and piety, to the nature and dignity of angels; and, so far as he is an animal being, he may degenerate, through vice and irreligion, to the abject nature of a brute. What

limits God hath assigned to either progress we know not; but, forasmuch as the Divine nature is at the head, and the diabolical at the foot, of all beings, it seems impossible, that a creature so progressive in virtue and vice as man is, should not always either improve in angelical goodness to a greater resemblance of God, or grow more brutishly wicked, to a still nearer and nearer likeness of the devil.

Pursuant to this observation, there are three states, in one or other of which every man may be found.

The first is of those, who waver between virtue and the angelical nature, on the one side; and vice, with the brutal nature, on the other. Religion and conscience, having laid hold on their understandings, teach them to look upward, and labour to improve and refine their nature to a resemblance of better beings than themselves. During the influence of these principles, they rise to some improvement in piety; but are soon thrown down again to low thoughts, to gross and vicious actions, and consequently to a depravation and corruption of nature, by the force of violent temptations, working on the brutal part of their composition. A man of this turn, having too much understanding and conscience to be completely wicked, and too much of appetite and passion to be uniformly good, 'is unstable in all his ways.' One hour, his religious, his laudable ambition to be somewhat more than a mere man, raises him above himself, and forces even his passions to second his reason and principles; the next, his fleshly appetites and brutal passions, taking the lead, sink him as much below himself, and the rank even his mixed nature entitles him to in the scale of being, insomuch that his understanding is darkened,' his very reason for a time depraved, and his principles perverted or biassed to a miserable compliance with such intentions and actions, as better become a brute than The one half of his nature seems to consult apart from the other, and even sometimes to act by itself, as if he consisted rather of two distinct persons, than two different parts. Take him when the spiritual part of his nature prevails, and you conceive hopes of his becoming in time a saint or an angel. Take him when the brutal part hath the mastery, and you cannot help fearing, he will at length degenerate into a brute or devil.

a man.

This war between the law of spirit and flesh, both of which are strong and active within him, not only makes it uncertain, as well to himself as others, what he is, or will be, but likewise renders every one of his actions, whether virtuous or vicious, so very defective in its kind, that it is impossible to judge, whether he is a good or bad man, whether he is in the broad or narrow way; and, in a word, whether the angel or the animal hath the better right to give him a

name.

However, it is worth his while seriously to consider two things; the misery, and danger, of his condition.

That man is certainly, for the present, very unhappy, who, having a just sense of religion, a rational prospect, and with it a glorious ambition, of rising to a higher order of beings by the purification and improvement of his nature, finds himself nevertheless drawn downward by the inferior part of that nature, and so entangled in the corruption of sin, that his fears of falling into a lower and baser order of beings are fully sufficient to balance all his hopes of rising. He who hath great thoughts, and a high sense of things, must be infinitely more impatient, than men whose minds are much lower pitched, under the disgrace of a fall from such exalted views, to reasonable apprehensions of finding himself, in the end, a vile and abject beast, instead of a glorious angel.

But, while he labours under these distractions, he hath something, if he considers it, to reproach himself with, that sets him, in point of understanding, below the fool who is uniformly wicked. A life so divided between virtue and vice as his, can never refine his nature, and qualify him for glory and happiness; and yet no kind of life can be farther from pleasure and satisfaction; for, at the same time that his corrupt inclinations, and vile practices, put it out of his power to relish the angelic pleasures of contemplation, of devotion, and of doing good, his conscience, and his title to exaltation, which he knows not how to surrender, forbid his having any other than an imperfect enjoyment of sin, and force him to take up with a pitiful share of those pleasures, which the entirely wicked allows himself. Besides, his sinful pleasures are imbittered with remorse, and he feels the pangs of guilt without the comfort of reformation. Is this

a scheme for a sensible mind, or one that had ever any notion of that which is great and good, to rest in? No; it is so far from a rational scheme, that it is no scheme at all. He is a man of understanding and religion, and yet lives without a design or scheme, without any certain aim or end; but is sometimes drawn upward, and sometimes driven downward (without knowing where he shall stop in the one progress, or whether he shall persevere in the other), by quite contrary impulses, that depend not, either as to their kind or degree, on his own election. Surely the condition of such a man, so convulsed and torn by contrary principles, so anxiously struggling upward at one time, and so shamefully falling at another, so racked between hopes and fears, now aspiring to the piety and glory of angels, and now plunged in the abject appetites, the abominable pollutions, of a beast, must be very miserable.

Yet, miserable as it is, he ought keenly to consider the danger he is in of falling, even from this state of distraction, wherein, if there is a battle, there is also some hope of victory, into a course of life, that must hurry him continually downward. It is not in the nature of man to be, for any considerable time, neither better nor worse. Nor will the principles that are within him, nor the spiritual good or ill powers that act on him from without, long suffer him to remain in the same moral state. If the Spirit of God, together with a lively conscience, and a right sense of religion, have the government of his mind, they will lead him continually upward to a more pure and spiritual nature. If the devil and vice have the dominion over him, they will keep him always in motion downward, to still deeper and fouler degrees of corruption. Besides, as habit always naturally grows out of practice, it will add considerably to the speed and expedition of either progress.

It being therefore certain, that he must be always, in the main, either rising or falling; and, as he cannot but choose the former, it is his business to bring his passions and affections, as speedily as possible, either heartily to concur with, or at least humbly to submit to, his choice. In order to this, the nature of the subject we are upon, if closely considered, will lend him all the assistance (humanly speaking) his case admits of. If, on the one hand, he strongly repre