happy effect, which restores a better appetite; and so worship hath been well performed, when we have a stronger inclination to other acts pleasing to God, and a more sensible distaste of those temptations we too much relished before.

Now Jesus Christ in all his actions was an exact pattern of humility. After the institution and celebration of the supper, a special act of worship in the church; though he had a sense of all the authority his Father had given him, yet he humbles himself to wash his disciples' feet. And after his sublime prayer, (John xvii.) he humbles himself to the death, and offers himself to his murderers, because of his Father's pleasure. (John xviii. 1.) What is the end of God in appointing worship, is the end of a spiritual heart in offering it; not his own exaltation but God's glory.

What delight is there after it? What pleasure is there, and what is the object of that pleasure? Is it communion we have had with God, or a fluency in ourselves? Is it something which hath touched our hearts, or pleased our fancies? As the strength of sin is known by the delightful thoughts of it after the commission, so is the spirituality of duty, by the object of our delightful remembrance after the performance. It was a sign David was spiritual in the worship of God in the tabernacle, when he enjoyed it, because he longed for the spiritual part of it, when he was exiled from it. His desires were not only for liberty to revisit the tabernacle, but to see the power and glory of God in the sanctuary, as he had seen it before his desires for it could not have been so ardent, if his reflection upon what had passed, had not been delightful; nor could his soul be poured out in him for the want of such opportunities, if the remembrance of the converse he had had with God, had not been accompanied with a delightful relish. (Psalm lxiii. 2; xlii. 4.)

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II. THE ETERNITY OF GOD.

ETERNITY DEFINED.

ETERNITY is a perpetual duration, which hath neither beginning nor end; time hath both. Those things we say are in time, that have beginning, grow up by degrees, have succession of parts. Eternity is contrary to time, and is therefore a permanent and immutable state; a perfect possession of life without any variation. It comprehends in itself all years, all ages, all periods of ages; it never begins! It endures after every duration of time, and never ceaseth; it as much outruns time, as it went before the beginning of it. Time supposes something before it, but there can be nothing before eternity, or it were then not eternity. Time hath a continual succession; the former time passeth away, and another succeeds; the last year is not this year, nor this year the next. We must conceive of eternity contrary to the notion of time; as the nature of time consists in the succession of parts, so the nature of eternity in an infinite immutable duration. Eternity and time differ as the sea and rivers; the sea never changes place, and is always one water; but the rivers glide along, and are swallowed up in the sea; so is time by eternity.

GOD IS ETERNAL.

Eternity is a negative attribute, and is denying of God any measures of time, as immensity is denying of him any bounds of place; as immensity is the diffusion of his essence, so eternity is the duration of his essence; and when we say God is eternal, we exclude from him all possibility of beginning and ending, all flux and change: as the essence of God cannot be bounded by any place, so it is not to be limited by any time; as it is his immensity to be every where, so it is his eternity to be always. As created things are said to be somewhere in regard of place, and to be present, past, or future, in regard of time; so the Creator, in regard of place, is every where; in regard of time, is semper: his duration is as endless, as his essence is boundless: he always was and always will be, and will no more have an end than he had a beginning; and this is an excellence belonging to the supreme Being. As his essence comprehends all beings and exceeds them, and his immensity surmounts all places; so his eternity comprehends all times, all durations, and infinitely excels them.

Time began with the foundation of the world, but God being before time, could have no beginning in time. Before the beginning of the creation, and the beginning of time, there could be nothing but eternity: nothing but what was uncreated, that is, nothing but what was without beginning. To be in time is to have a beginning; to be before all time is never to have a beginning, but always to be: for as between the Creator and creatures there is no medium, so between time and eternity there is no medium. It is as easily deduced, that he that was before all creatures is eternal, as he that made all creatures is God.

God only is immortal; he only is so by a necessity of nature: angels, souls, and bodies too, after the resurrection, shall be immortal: not by nature but grant; they are subject to return to nothing, if that word that raised them from nothing should speak them into nothing again: it is as easy with God to strip them of it as to invest them with it; nay, it is impossible but that they should perish, if God should withdraw his power from preserving them, which he exerted in creating them: but God is immoveably fixed in his own being; that as none gave him his life, so none can deprive him of his life, or the least particle of it; not a jot of the happiness and life, which God infinitely possesses, can be lost: it will be as durable to everlasting, as it hath been possessed from everlasting.

The creatures are in a perpetual change; something is acquired, or something lost every day. A man is the same in regard of existence when he is a man, as he was when he was a child; but there is a new succession of quantities and qualities in him: every day he acquires something till he comes to his maturity; every day he loses something till he comes to his period. A man is not the same at night that he was in the morning; something is expired and something is added; every day there is a change in his age, a change in his substance, a change in his accidents: but God hath his whole being in one and the same point, or moment of eternity; he receives nothing as an addition to what he was before; he loseth nothing of what he was before; he is always the same excellency and perfection in the same infiniteness as ever.

Of a creature it may be said, he was, or he is, or he shall be; of God it cannot be said, but only he is; he is what he always was, and he is what he always will be; whereas a creature is what he was not, and will be what he is not now; as it may be said of the

flame of a candle, it is flame, but it is not the same individual flame as was before, nor is it the same that will be presently after; there is a continual dissolution of it into air, and a continual supply for the generation of more; while it continues, it may be said there is a flame; yet not entirely one, but in a succession of parts; so of a man it may be said, he is in a succession of parts; but he is not the same that he was, and will not be the same that he is; but God is the same without any succession of part, and of time; of him it may be said, He is; he is no more now than he was, and he shall be no more hereafter than he is. God possesses a firm and absolute being, always constant to himself; he sees all things moving under him in a continual variation; he beholds the revolutions in the world without any change of his most glorious and immoveable nature; all other things pass from one state to another; from their original, to their eclipse and destruction: but God possesses his being in one indivisible point, having neither beginning nor end.

There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world, make not succession or new objects in the divine mind; for all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world in regard of their existence: he doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once; known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world. (Acts xv. 18.) All things are past, present, and to come in regard of their existence; but there is not past, present, and to come in regard of God's knowledge of them; because he sees and knows not by any other, but by himself; he is his own light by which he sees, his own glass wherein he sees; beholding himself, he beholds all things.

There is no succession in the decrees of God. He