blessedness and this love, and rejoice in the everlasting assurance of it, cannot but be filled with intense joy. What can be a greater foundation of complete blessedness and delight, than the immediate sensation and assurance of being beloved by the glorious, and supreme, and the all-sufficient Being, who will never suffer his favorites to want any thing he can bestow upon them, to make them happy in perfection, and for ever? All creatures are under his present view and immediate command; there is not the least of them can give disturbance to any of the favorites of heaven, who dwell in the midst of their Creator's love; nor is there any creature that can be employed towards the complete happiness of the saints on high, but is for ever under the disposal of that God who has made all things, and it shall be employed upon every just occasion for the display of his love to his saints.

Some have imagined, that that perfect satisfaction of soul, which arises from a good conscience, speaking peace inwardly in the survey of its sincere desire to please God in all things, and having, with uprightness of heart, fulfilled its duty, is the supreme delight of heaven: but it is my opinion, that God has never made the felicity of his creatures to be drawn so entirely out of themselves, or from the spring of their own bosom, as this notion seems to imply. God himself will be All in All to his creatures; and all their original springs of blessedness, as well as being, are in him, and must be derived from him: it is therefore the overflowing sense of being beloved by a God almighty and eternal, that is the supreme fountain of joy and blessedness to every reasonable nature, and the endless security of this happiness is joy everlasting in all the regions of the blessed above.

Now a taste of this kind is heavenly blessedness even on this earth, where God is pleased to bestow it on his creatures; and the glimpses of it bring such ecstacies into the soul, as can hardly be conceived

or revealed to others, but it is best felt by them who enjoy it,

SECT. VII.

Foretastes of heaven in the fervent emotions of soul in love to Jesus Christ.

What the love and strong affections of the blessed saints above, toward Jesus Christ their Lord and Saviour, may impress of joy on their spirits, is not possible for us to learn in the present state; but there are some who have even here on earth felt such transcendent affections to Jesus the Son of God, even though they have never enjoyed the sight of them, yet they love him with most intense and ardent zeal; their devotion almost swallows them up, and carries them away captive above all earthly things, and brings them near to the heavenly world. There is an unknown joy which arises from such intense love to an object so lovely and so deserving; such is that which is spoken concerning the saints to whom St. Peter wrote, I Pet. i. 8. "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." It is through this divine taste of love, and joy, and glory communicated by the blessed Spirit, reyealing the things of Christ to their souls, that many of the confessors and martyrs in the primitive ages, and in later times, have not only joyfully parted with all their possessions and their comforts in this life, but have followed the call of God through prisons and deaths of a most dreadful kind; through racks, and fires, and many torments, for the sake of the love of Jesus. And perhaps there may be some in our day who have had so lively and strong a sensation of the love of Christ let in upon their souls, that they could not only be content to be absent from all their carnal delights for ever, but even from their intellectual and more spiritual entertainments, if they might be for

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ever placed in such a situation to Jesus Christ, as to feel the everlasting beams of his love let out upon them, and to rejoice in him with perpetual delight. As he is the nearest image of God the Father, they can love nothing beneath God equal to their love of him, nor delight in any thing beneath God equal to their delight in Jesus Christ. Indeed their love and their joy are so wrapped up in the great and blessed God, as he appears in Christ Jesus, that they do not usually divide their affections in this matter, but love God supremely for ever, as revealing himself in his most perfect love in Christ Jesus unto their souls. How near this may approach to the glorified love of the saints in heaven, or what difference there is between the holy ones above and the saints below in this respect, may be hard to say.

SECT. VIII.

Foretastes of heaven in the transcendent love of the saints to each other. I might here ask some advanced saints,

Have you never seen or heard of a fellow-christian growing into such a near resemblance to the blessed Jesus, in all the virtues and graces of the Spirit, that you would willingly part with all the attainments and honors that you have already arrived at, which make you never so eminent in the world or the church, as to be made so near a conformist to the image of the blessed Jesus as this fellow-christian has seemed to be?

Have you never seen or read of the glories and graces of the Son of God exemplified in some of the saints in so high a degree, and at the same time been so divested of self, and so mortified to a narrow selflove, as to be satisfied with the lowest and the meanest supports of life, and the meanest station in the church of Christ here on earth, if you might but be favored to partake of that transcendent likeness

to the holy Jesus, as you would fain imitate and possess.

Have you never had a view of all the virtues and graces of the saints, derived from one eternal foundtain, the blessed God, and flowing through the mediation of Jesus his Son, in so glorious a manner, that you have longed for the day when you shall be amongst them, and receive your share of this blessedness? Have you never found yourself so united to them in one heart and one soul, that you have wished them all the same blessings that you wished to yourself, and that without the least shadow of grudging or envy, if every one of them were partakers as much as you? There is no envy among the heavenly inhabitants: nor doth St. Paul receive the less because Cephas or Apollos has a large share. Every vessel has its capacity enlarged to a proper extent by the God of nature and grace, and every vessel is completely filled, and feels itself for ever full and for ever happy: then there cannot be found the shadow of envy amongst them.

Now, to sum up the view of these things in short: who is there that enjoys these blessed evidences of an interest in the inheritance on high, who is there that has any such foretastes of the felicity above, but must join with the whole creation in groaning for the great day, when all the children of God shall appear in the splendor of their adoption, and every thing in nature and grace among them shall attain the proper end for which it was at first designed? And whensoever any such christian hears some of the last words in the Bible pronounced by our Lord Jesus, " Surely I come quickly," he must immediately join in the universal echo of the saints with unspeakable delight, " even so come, O Lord Jesus."

DISCOURSE XI.

SAFETY IN THE GRAVE,

AND

JOY AT THE RESURRECTION.

JOB xiv. 13, 14, 15.

O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me in secret until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will. answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands.

BEFORE we attempt to make any improvement of these words of Job for our present edification, it is necessary that we search out the true meaning of them. There are two general senses of these three verses, which are given by some of the most considerable interpreters of scripture, and they are exceeding different from each other.

The first is this. Some suppose Job, under the extremity of his anguish, to long after death here, as he does in some other parts of this book, and to desire that God would cut him off from the land of the living, and hide him in the grave, or at least take him away from the present stage of action, and conceal him in some retired and solitary place, dark as the grave is, till all the days which might be designed for his pain and sorrow were finished: and that God would appoint him a time for his restoration to health and happiness again in this world, and raise him to the possession of it, by calling him out of