A. When we govern all our Actions with a Respect to the next Life, and make it our great Business to please God, who is the first and chiefest Good; For our Fruit must be unto Holiness, before Rom. vi. 22. our End can be everlasting Life. When we have a low and mean Opinion of the Enjoyments of this World, in Comparison of those in the next; and are ready to part with what is most dear to us to secure our eternal Inheritance. When we are zealous and industrious in doing all the Good, we can, and bear all the Miseries and Calamities of Life with Patience and Resignation, without murmuring, without Despondency, because they are not worthy Rom. viii. to be compared with the Glory that shall be revealed. 18. When we frequently entertain ourselves with spiritual Subjects, and embrace all convenient Opportunities of conversing with God by Prayer, and by approaching his holy Table; and had rather be Door- Psal. keepers in the House of God, than to dwell in the Tents xxxiv. of Wickedness. When we can look upon Death as a Passage to a blessed Immortality, and welcome its Approach, not only without Fear, but with Comfort and Satisfaction. Knowing that when this earthly 2 Cor. v. 1. Tabernacle shall be dissolved, we shall have a House not made with Hands, eternal in the Heavens.

THE PRAYERS.

I.

1

10.

Effects of

tion.

ALMIGHTY God, who, through thy only be-For the gotten Son Jesus Christ, hast overcome Death, and blessed opened unto us the Gate of everlasting Life; I Christ's humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special Grace Resurrespreventing me, thou dost put into my Mind good Desires, so by thy continual Help I may bring the same to good Effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, World without End. Amen.

II.

ALMIGHTY Father, who hast given thine only For ConSon to die for our Sins, and to rise again for qur from Sin.

version

Thanks

Christ's

tion.

Justification; grant me so to put away the Leaven of Malice and Wickedness, that I may always serve thee in Pureness of Living and Truth, through the Merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

III...

It is very meet, right, and my bounden Duty, giving for that I should at all Times, and in all Places. give Resurrec- Thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty everlasting God; But chiefly am I bound to praise thee, for the glorious Resurrection of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the very Paschal Lamb which was offered for us, and hath taken away the Sin of the World; who by his Death hath destroyed Death, and by his rising to Life again, hath restored us to everlasting Life: Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the Company of Heaven, I laud and magnify thy glorious Name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, Heaven and Earth are full of thy Glory! Glory be to thee, O Lord most High. Amen,

For the

Christ's

tion.

IV.

BLESSED Jesus, who hast triumphed over the Effects of Powers of Darkness, and conquered Hell and the Resurrec- Grave, who by thy glorious Resurrection hast made known the Power of thy Divinity, and proved thyself to be the true Messias; keep me stedfast in this Faith, and grant that all the Actions of my Life may testify the Reality and Sincerity of my Belief. Make me to rise from the Death of Sinto the Life of Righteousness; that as I am buried with thee by Baptism, I may mortify all my corrupt Lusts and Affections, and no longer esteem the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World: and by being conformed to the Likeness of thy Resurrection, may put on the new Man, which after God is created in Righteousness and true Holiness. That I may place my Affections entirely on Things above, and spend the remaining Part of my Life to secure that Hap

piness thou hast purchased for me; that by thy Strength I may fight against all my ghostly Enemies, and by thy Power overcome them. Suffer not the Thoughts of Death to be any longer uneasy to me, since thou hast taken out the Sting, and divested it of any Power to hurt: But teach me to look upon it as a Deliverance from Sin and Sorrow, and as a Passage to a happy Eternity; that when I shall depart this Life, I may rest in thee, and at the general Resurrection at the last Day be found acceptable in thy Sight, O Lord, my Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.

CHAP. XVI.

EASTER MONDAY.

Q. WHAT sheweth the great Solemnity of the Easter Festival?

A. The particular Care the Church hath taken to set apart the two following Days after the Sunday, for the Exercise of Religious Duties, to the End that we might have Leisure to confirm our Faith in the grand Article of our Saviour's Resurrection, and to exert our devout Affections in all those happy Consequences that are deducible from it.

Q. What are the Consequences deducible from our Saviour's Resurrection?

A. That though, through the Fall of Adam, we are all made subject to Death, yet that our Souls, when separated from our Bodies, shall live in another State; and that even our Bodies, though committed to the Grave, and turned to Dust, shall, at the last Day, rise again, and be united to our Souls; and being thus united and purified, the whole Man, Body and Soul, shall be made capable of Happiness to all Eternity. By our Saviour's rising from the Dead, he is become the First-fruits of them that sleep; and he who hath promised to raise us up, did raise himself from the

4

2 Tim. i.

10.

Dead; which is a Security for us that he will make his Word good.

Q. What do you mean by the Soul?...

A. An immaterial Principle in Man, distinct from the Body, which is the Cause of those several Operations, which by inward Sense and Experience we are conscious to ourselves of. It is that whereby we think and remember, whereby we reason and debate about any Thing, and do freely chuse and refuse such Things as are presented to us.

Q. What do you mean by the Immortality of the Soul?

A. That this immaterial Principle in Man, called the Soul, is so created by the divine Wisdom and Goodness, as not to have in itself any Composition or Principles of Corruption; but that it will naturally, or of itself, continue for ever, and will not, by any natural Decay or Power of Nature, be dissolved or destroyed. That when the Body falls into the Ground, this Principle will still remain and live separate from it, and continue to perform all such Operations towards which the Organs of the Body are not necessary, and not only continue, but live in this separate State; so as to be sensible of Happiness and Misery. But yet nevertheless it depends continually upon God, who hath Power to destroy and annihilate it, as he can all other Creatures, if he should so think fit.

Q. What Proof have we of the Soul's Immortality?

A. That there is an immaterial Principle in Man distinct from the Body, which shall continue for ever capable of Happiness and Misery, hath great Probability from the Evidence of Reason, and natural Arguments incline us to believe it. But that which giveth us the great Assurance of it, is the Revelation of the Gospel, whereby Life and Immortality is brought to Light. This is the only sure Foundation of our Hopes, and an Anchor for our

Faith: because the Authority of God is above all Reason and Philosophy: other Arguments may be disputed, but this leaves no Place for Doubt, having in a Manner made it visible to us by our Saviour's rising from the Dead.

Q. What are the Arguments from Reason, in their own Nature, apt to persuade us that the Soul is immortal?

4. The Arguments from Reason may be taken from the Nature of the Soul itself, and those seve ral Operations which we are conscious to ourselves of, and which cannot, without great Violence to Reason, be ascribed to Matter. From the univer sal Consent of Mankind, which sheweth it to be a natural Notion and Dictate of the Mind. From those natural Notions we have of God, and of the essential Difference of Good and Evil: And from the natural Hopes and Fears of Men. These are such Arguments as in Reason the Nature of the Thing will bear; for an immortal Nature is neither capable of the Evidence of Sense, nor of mathematical Demonstration: and therefore we should content ourselves with these Arguments in this Matter, so far as to suffer ourselves to be persuaded, that it is highly probable; the thorough Belief of it can only be fixed upon Revelation.

Q. How does it appear that the Soul is immortal from the Nature of the Soul itself?

A. Because those several Actions and Operations which we are conscious to ourselves of, such as Liberty, or a Power of chusing or refusing, and the several Acts of Reason and Understanding, cannot without great Violence be ascribed to Matter, or be resolved into any bodily Principle, and therefore we must attribute them to another Principle different from Matter, and consequently immortal and incapable in its own Nature of Corruption. It is by this Principle in us, that we abstract, compare, infer, and methodize, and by which we conceive many Things, which no material Phantasm can re