blessed preparations are made for our hope? Shall we now let the tempter shake it or discourage it? The abundant mercy of God the Father hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Christ, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us. Grace teacheth us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this world, as looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour. We are renewed by the Holy Ghost, and justified by grace, that we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. We are illuminated, that we may know the hope of Christ's calling, and what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. The hope that is laid up for us in heaven is the chief doctrine of the gospel, which bringeth life and immortality into clearer light. It is for this hope that we keep a conscience void of offence, and that God is served in the world, wherefore gird up the loins of thy mind; put on this helmet, the hope of salvation; and let not death seem to thee as it doth to them that have no hope. The love of our Father, and our Saviour, have given us everlasting consolation, and good hope through grace, to comfort our hearts, and stablish them in every good word and work. Keep therefore the rejoicing of hope firm to the end. Continue grounded and settled in the faith, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel. Now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee; uphold me according to thy word, that I may live; and let me not be ashamed of my hope. Though mine iniquities testify against me, yet, O thou that art the hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble, be not as a stranger to my soul. Thy name is called upon by me, O forsake me not. Why have our eyes beheld thy wonders, and why have we had thy covenant and thy mercies, but that we might set our hope in God. Remember the word to thy servant upon which thou hast caused me to hope. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord; my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. I will hope in the Lord, for with him there is mercy and plenteous redemption. For he takes pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. Though flesh and heart fail, the Lord is the rock of my heart; he is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good to them that wait for him; to the soul that seeks him. It is good that I should both hope, and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for me that I have borne the yoke in my youth, and that I keep silence, and put my mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope. God need not flatter such worms as we, nor promise us that which he never means to perform. He hath laid the rudiments of our hope in a nature capable of desiring, seeking, and thinking of another life. He hath called me, by grace, to actual desires and endeavours; and some foretaste he hath vouchsafed. I look for no heaven, but the perfection of divine life, light, and love, in endless glory with Christ and his holy ones; and this he hath begun in me already. Shall I not boldly hope when I have the capacity, the promise, the earnest, and foretaste? Is it not God himself that hath caused me to hope? Was not nature, promise, and grace from him? And can a soul miscarry, and be deceived, that departs hence in a hope of God's own causing and encouraging? Lord, I have lived in hope, I have prayed in hope, I have laboured, suffered, and waited in hope; and, by thy grace, I will die in hope. Is not this according to thy word and will? And wilt thou cast away a soul that hopes in thee, by thine own command and operation? Had wealth and honour, or continuance on earth, or the favour of man, been my reward and hope, my hope and I had died together: were this our best, how vain were man! But the Lord lives, and my Redeemer is glorified, and intercedes for me; and the same Spirit is in heaven who is in my heart; as the same sun is in the firmament which is in my house, The promise is sure to all Christ's seed; and millions are now in heaven that once did live and die in hope; they were sinners once as now I am; they had no other Saviour, no other Sanc-. tifier, no other promise, than I now have, confessing that they were strangers here; they looked for a better country, and for a city that had foundations, even a heavenly, where now they are; and shall I not follow them in hope that have sped so well? Hope then, O my soul, unto the end. From henceforth, and for ever, hope in the Lord. I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more; my mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and salvation. The Lord is at my right hand; I shall not be moved. My heart therefore is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also shall dwell confidently, and rest in hope; for God hath showed me the path of life in his presence is fulness of joy, and at his right-hand are pleasures for evermore. III. What then remains, O my soul, but that in trust and hope thou love thy God, thy Saviour, thy Comforter, the glorious society, thy own perfection in glorious, endless, heavenly life, light, and love, and the joyful praises of Jehovah, better than this burden of painful and corruptible flesh, and this howling wilderness, the habitation of serpents and untamed brutes, where unbelief and murmuring, lust and folly, injustice and uncharitableness, tyranny and divisions, pride and contention, have long provoked God, and wearied thee; where the vintage and harvest is thorns and thistles, sins and sorrows, cares and crosses, manured by manifold temptations? How odious is that darkness and unbelief, that unholiness and disaffection, that deadness and stupidity, which makes such a work as this, so reasonable, necessary, and pleasant a work, to seem unsuitable or hard? Is it unsuitable or hard to the eye to see the sun and light? Or by it to see the beautified world? Or for a man to love his life or health, his father or his friend? What should be easier to a nature that hath rational love, than to love him that is essential love itself: he that loves all, and gives to all the loving faculty, should be loved by all: he that hath specially loved me, should be specially loved by me. universal love communicate and pour out itself more plentifully upon my heart, how easy would it be to leave this flesh and world, and to hear the sentence of my departure to my God! Death and the grave would be but a triumph for victorious love: it would be easier to die in peace and joy, than to rest at night, or to come home from my travel to my beloved friends, or to go, when I am hungry, to a feast: a little love hath made me study willingly, preach willingly, and write willingly, yea, and suffer somewhat willingly; and would not more make me go more willingly to God? Shall the imagination of house, gardens, walks, libraries, prospects, meadows, orchards, hills and rivers, allure the desires of deceived minds? Shall not the thoughts of the heavenly mansions, society, and delights, much more allure and draw up my desires? The reading of a known fiction of a city of the sun, an Utopia, an Atlantis, &c. hath pleased many. But if I did believingly hear of such a country in the world, where men did never die, nor were sick, or weak, or sad, where the prince was perfectly just and pious, wise and peaceable, devoted to God and the public good; and the teachers were all wise, judicious men, of universal certain knowledge, perfectly acquainted with the matter and method of natural and theological truths, and all their duty, and all of one mind, and of one heart, tongue and practice; loving each other, and the people as themselves, and leading the flocks heaven-ward through all temptations, with triumphant hopes and joy; where all the people perfectly obeyed God, their commanders and their teachers, and lived in perfect love, unity, and peace, and were daily employed in the joyful praises of God, and hopes of glory, and in doing all possible good to one another, contending with none through ignorance, uncharitableness or pride, nor ever reproaching, injuring, or hurting one another, &c. I say, if I knew or heard of such a country, should I not love it before I ever see it, and earnestly desire to be there? Nay, do I not over-love this distracted world, where tyranny sheds streams of blood, and lays desolate cities and countries, and exposes the miserable inhabitants to lament Love is the perfection of all thy preparations. It desires to please God; and therefore to be in the most pleasing state, and freed from all that is displeasing to him, which is not to be hoped for on earth. It desires all suitable nearness, acquaintance, union and communion: it is weary of distance, estrangement, and alien society and affairs. It takes advantage of every notice, intimation, or mention of God, to renew and exercise these desires. Every message and mercy from him is fuel for love, and while we are short of perfection, stir up our desires after more. When love tastes of the grapes, it would have the vine: when it tastes of the fruits, it would dwell where they grow, and possess the land: its thoughts of proximity and fruition are sweet, no other person or thing can satisfy it. The soul is where it loves if our friend dwell in our hearts by love; and if fleshly pleasure, riches, and honour, dwell in the heart of the volup-able distress and famine; where the same tyranny tuous, the covetous, and the proud, surely God sets up the wicked, reproaches and oppresses and our Redeemer, the heavenly society, holiness, the just and innocent, keeps out the gospel, and and glory, dwell in the heart which loves them keeps up idolatry, infidelity, and wickedness, with a fervent love. If heaven dwell in my in the far greatest part of all the earth; where heart, shall I not desire to dwell in heaven? Satan chooses pastors too often for the churches Light and light, fire and fire, are not more in- of Christ, even such as by ignorance, pride, clined to union than love and love; gracious sensuality, worldliness, and malignity, become love, and glorious love. Would divine, original, thorns and thistles; yea, devouring wolves, to : are they as the prophets that Obadiah hid in caves, or as Micaiah, or Elias among the lying those whom they should feed and comfort; where no two persons are in all things of a mind; where evil is commended, and truth and good-prophets, or the Baalites? Though such as of ness accused and oppressed, because men's minds are unacquainted with them, or unsuitable to them. Those that are the greatest pretenders to truth, do most eagerly contend against it, and oppose it; and almost all the world are scolding or scuffling in the dark; and where there appears but little hopes of a remedy. I say, can I love such a world as this? And shall I not think more delightfully of the inheritance of the saints in light, and the uniting love and joyful praises of the church triumphant, and the heavenly choir ? Should I not love a lovely and a loving world much better than a world where there is, comparatively, so little loveliness or love? All that is of God is good and lovely ; but it is not here that his glory shines in felicitating splendour. I am taught to look upward when I pray, and to say, 'Our Father which art in heaven.' God's works are amiable even in hell; and yet though I would know them, I would not be there; and, alas, how much of the works of man are mixed here with the works of God. Here is God's wisdom manifest; but here is man's obstinate folly. Here is God's government; but here is man's tyranny and unruliness. Here is God's love and mercies; but here are men's malice, wrath, and cruelty; by which they are worse to one another than wolves or tigers, depopulating countries, and filling the world with bloodshed, amine, misery, and lamentations; proud tyrants being worse than raging plagues; which made David choose the pestilence before his enemies' pursuit. Here is much of God's beauteous order and harmony; but here is also much of man's madness, deformity, and confusion. Here is much historical truth, and some civil and ecclesiastical justice; but, alas, with how much odious falsehood and injustice is it mixed? Here is much precious theological verity; but how dark is much of it to such blind, negligent, and corrupted minds, as every where abound? Here are wise, judicious teachers and companions to be found but, alas, how few in comparison of the most, and how hardly known by those that need them! Here are sound and orthodox ministers of Christ, but how few that most need them know which are they, and how to value them or use them? How many thousands of seduced or sensual sinners are made believe that they are but deceivers, or, as they called Paul, pestilent fellows, and movers of sedition among the people. In how many parts of the world : whom the world is not worthy. Is that world then, more worthy of our love than heaven? There are worthy and religious families which honour God, and are honoured by him: but, alas, how few and usually by the temptations of wealth, and worldly interest, how full even of the sins of Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, if not also unmercifulness to the poor! How are they tempted to plead for their sins and snares, and account it rustic ignorance which contradicts them? How few pious families are there of the greater sort that do not quickly degenerate, and their posterity, by false religion, error, or sensuality, grow most contrary to the minds of their pious progenitors? There are many that educate their children wisely in the fear of God, and have accordingly comfort in them; but how many are there that, having devoted them in baptism to God, train them up in the service of the flesh, the world, and the devil, which they renounced; and never understood, or at least intended for themselves or children, what they did profess? How many parents think, that when they offer their children to God in baptism, without a sober and due consideration of the nature and meaning of that great covenant with God, that God must accept, and certainly regenerate and save them! Yea, too many religious parents forget that they themselves are sponsors in that covenant, and undertake to use the means on their part to make their children fit for the grace of the Son and the communion of the Spirit, as they grow up, and think that God should absolutely sanctify, keep, and save them at age, because they are theirs, and were baptized, though they keep them not from great and unnecessary temptations, nor teach them plainly and seriously the meaning of the covenant which was made for them with God, as to the nature, benefits or conditions of it. How many send them to others to be taught in grammar, logic, philosophy, or arts, yea, and divinity, before their own parents ever taught them what they did with God in baptism, what they received, and what they promised and vowed to do? They send them to trades, or secular callings, or to travel in fo reign lands, among a multitude of snares, among tempting company, and tempting baits, before ever at home they were instructed, armed, and settled against those temptations which they must needs encounter, and which, if they do not overcome, they are undone. How ordinarily, when they have first neglected this great duty of their own for their fortification, do they plead a necessity of thrusting them out on these temptations, though utterly unarmed, from some punctilio of honour or conformity to the world, to avoid the contempt of worldly men, or to adorn their yet naked souls with some of the plumes or painted trifles, ceremonies, or complements, which will never serve instead of heavenly wisdom, mortification, and the love of God and man as if they were like to learn that fear of God in a crowd of diverting and tempting company, baits, and business, which they never learned under the teaching, nurture, and daily oversight of their religious parents, in a safer station: or, as if for some little reason they might send them as to sea without pilot or anchor, and think that God must save them from the waves: or, as if it were better to enter them into satan's school or army, and venture them upon the notorious danger of damnation, than to miss of preferment and wealth, or of the fashions and favour of the times. Then when they hear that they have forsaken God and true religion, and given up themselves to lust and sensuality, and perhaps as enemies to God and good men, destroy what their parents laboured to build up, these parents wonder at God's judgments, and with broken hearts lament their infelicity, when it were better to lament their own misdoing, and it had been best of all to have lamented it. much of God's mercies and comforts I have here had, but their sweetness was their taste of divine love, and their tendency to heavenly perfection. What was the end and use of all the good that ever I saw, or that ever God did for my soul or body, but to teach me to love him, and long for more? How many weaning experiences; how many thousand better or contemning thoughts have I had of all the glory and pleasures of this world; how many thousand love-tokens from God have called me to believe and taste his goodness! Wherever I go, and which way soever I look, I see vanity and vexation written upon all things in this world, so far as they stand in competition with God, and would be the end and portion of a fleshly mind. I see holiness to the Lord written upon every thing, so far as it declares God, and leads me to him, as my ultimate end. God hath not for nothing engaged me in a war against this world, and commanded me to take and use it as mine enemy: the emptiness, danger, and bitterness of the world, and the all-sufficiency, trustiness, and goodness of God, have been the sum of all the experiences of my life? Shall a worldly, backward heart overcome the teachings of nature, scripture, the Spirit of grace, and all experience? Far be it from me ! But, O my God, love is thy great and special gift: all good is from thee: but love is the godlike nature, life, and image. It is given us from the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the quickening, illuminating, and sanctifying operation of the Holy Spirit: what can the earth return unto the sun, but its own reflected beams? If those. As how far soever man is a medium in Thus families, churches, and kingdoms, run on to blindness, ungodliness, and confusion. Self-undoing, and serving the malice of Satan for fleshly lust, is the too common employment of mankind. All is wise, good, and sweet, which is prescribed us by God, in true nature, or super-generation, nature and that appetite which is the natural revelation. But folly, sin, and misery, mistaking themselves to be wit, honesty, and prosperity, and raging against that which nominally they pretend to and profess, are the ordinary case and course of the most of men. When we would plead them out of their deceit and misery, it is well if we are not tempted to imitate them, or be not partly infected with their disease, or at least reproached and oppressed as their enemies. Such a bedlam is most of the world become, where madness goes for the only wisdom, and he is the bravest man that can sin and be damned with reputation and renown, and successfully drive or draw the greatest numbers with him unto hell: to which the world hath no small likeness, forsaking God, and being very much forsaken by him. This is the world which stands in competition for my love, with the spiritual, blessed world: moving weight in the child, is thy work; so whatever is man's part in the mediate work of believing and repenting, which yet is not done without thy Spirit and grace, certainly it is the blessed regenerator which must make us new creatures, by giving us this divine nature, holy love, which is the holy appetite and weight of the soul. Come down, Lord, into this heart, for it cannot come up to thee. Can the plants for life, or the eye for light, go up unto the sun? Dwell in me by the spirit of love, and I shall dwell by love in thee. Reason is weak, and thoughts are various, and man will be a slippery, uncertain creature, if love be not his fixing principle, and do not incline his soul to thee: surely through thy grace, I easily feel that I love thy word. I love thy image, I love thy work, and O how heartily do I love to love thee, and long to know and love thee more! If all things be of thee, and through | Not like Noah's family in a wicked world, or thee, and to thee, surely this love to the beams Lot in a wicked city, or Abraham in an idolaof thy glory here on earth, is eminently so! trous land, nor like Elijah left alone, nor like It is thee, Lord, that it means: to thee it looks: those that wandered in sheep-skins and goatit is thee it serves: for thee it mourns, seeks, and skins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, hid in groans. In thee it trusts; and the hope, peace, dens and caves of the earth; not like Job on the and comfort, which support me, are in thee. dung-hill, nor like Lazarus at the rich man's When I was a returning prodigal in rags, thou door. Not like the African bishops, whose sawest me afar off, and met me with thy em- tongues were cut out; nor like the preachers bracing, feasting love. Shall I doubt whether silenced by popish imposers in Germany, by the he that hath better clothed me, and dwelt within Interim, or elsewhere; nor like such as Tzegeme, will entertain me with a feast of greater dine, Peucer, and many other worthy men, whose love in the heavenly mansions, the world of maturest age was spent in prisons. Not as we love? poor, bewildered sinners, seeing evil, and fearing more, confounded in folly and mad contention, some hating the only way of peace, and others groping for it in the dark, wandering and lost in the clearest light, where the illuminated can but pity the blind, but cannot make them willing to be delivered. The suitableness of things below to my fleshly nature, hath detained my affections too much on earth; and shall not the suitableness of things above to my spiritual nature much more draw up my love to heaven? There is the God whom I have sought and served. He is also here, but vailed, and but little known; but there he shines to heavenly spirits in heavenly glory. There is the Saviour in whom I have believed. He hath also dwelt in flesh on earth; but clothed in such meanness, and humbled to such a life and death, as was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles matter of reproach; but he shines and reigns now in glory, above the malice and contempt of sinners. I shall there live because he lives; and in his light I shall have light. He loved me here with a redeeming, regenerating, and preserving love: but there he will love me with a perfecting, glorifying, joyful love. I had here some rays of heavenly light; but interpositions caused eclipses and nights, yea, some long and winter nights. But there I shall dwell in the city of the sun, the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, where there is no night, eclipse, or darkness. There are the heavenly hosts, whose holy love and joyful praises I would wish to be a partaker of! I have here had some of their loving assistance, but to me unseen, being above our fleshly way of converse; but there I shall be with them, of the like nature in the same orb, and of the same triumphant church and choir! There are perfected souls gathered home to Christ not as here, striving like Esau and Jacob in the womb nor yet as John when he leaped in the womb, because of his mother's joy; nor as wrangling children, that are hardly kept in the same house in peace. Not like the servants of Abraham and Lot, like Paul and Barnabas, like Epiphanius and Chrysostom, like Luther and Carolostadius, like Ridley and Hooper, or the many striving parties now among us; nor like the disciples striving who should be the greatest. : What is heaven to me, but God? God who is life, light, and love, communicating himself to blessed spirits, perfecting them in the reception, possession, and exercise of life, light, and love for ever. These are not the accidents, but the essence of that God who is in heaven and all to me. Should I fear that death which passes me to infinite, essential life? Should I fear a darksome passage into a world of perfect light? Should I fear to go to love itself? Think, O my soul, what the sun's quickening light and heat is to this lower corporeal world! Much more is God, even infinite life, light, and love to the blessed world above. Doth it not draw out thy desires to think of going into a world of love? When love will be our region, our company, our life. More to us than the air is för our breath, than the light is for our sight, than our food is for our life, than our friends are for our solace; and more to us than we are to ourselves, and we more for it, as our ultimate end, than for ourselves. O excellent grace of faith which foresees, and blessed word of faith that foreshows this world of love! Shall I fear to enter where there is no wrath, no fear, no strangeness, nor suspicion, nor selfish separation, but love will make every holy spirit as dear and lovely to me as myself, and me to them as lovely as themselves, and God to us all more amiable than ourselves and all. Where love will have no defects or distances, no damps or discouragements, no discontinuance or mixed disaffection; but as life will be without death, and light without darkness, a perfect everlasting day of glory, so will love be without any hatred, unkindness, or allay. As many coals make one fire, and |