world, and every part thereof; and yet how little is God known? All men may easily know that there is a God, who is almighty, omniscient, goodness itself, eternal, omnipresent, the maker, preserver, and governor of all, who should have our whole trust, love, and obedience; and yet how little of this knowledge is to be perceived in men's hearts to themselves, or in their lives to others? All men know that the world is vanity, that men must die, that riches then profit not, that time is precious, and that we have only this little time to prepare for that which we must receive hereafter; and yet how little do men seem to know, indeed, of all such things as no man doubts of? When God doth come in with | his powerful awakening light and love, then all these things have another appearance of affecting reality, than they had before; as if but now we began to know them: words, doctrines, persons, things, seem as newly known to us. sons. All my best reasons for our immortality and future life, are but as the new-formed body of Adam before God breathed into him the breath of life it is he that must make them living reaTo the Father of lights therefore I must still look up, and for his light and love I must still wait; as for his blessing on the food which I have eaten, which must concoct it into my living substance. Arguments will be but undigested food, till God's effectual influx do digest them. I must learn both as a student and a beggar. When I have thought and thought a thousand times, I must beg thy blessing, Lord, upon my thoughts, or they will all be but dulness or self-distraction. If there be no motion, light, and life here without the influx of the sun, what can souls do, or receive, or feel, without thy influx? This world will be to us, without thy grace, as a grave or dungeon, where we shall lie in death and darkness. The eye of my understanding, and all its thoughts, will be useless or vexatious to me, without thine illuminating beams. O shine the soul of thy servant into a clearer knowledge of thyself and kingdom, and love him into more divine and heavenly love, and then he will willingly come to thee! I. Why should I strive by the fears of death, against the common course of nature, and against my only hopes of happiness? Is it not appointed for all men once to die? Would I have God to alter this determinate course, and make sinful man immortal upon earth? When we are sinless we shall be immortal. The love of life was given to teach me to preserve it carefully, and use it well, and not to torment me with the continual troubling foresight of death. Shall I make myself more miserable than the vegetatives and brutes? Neither they nor I do grieve that my flowers must fade and die, and that my sweet and pleasant fruits must fall, and the trees be unclothed of their beauteous leaves, until the spring. Birds, beasts, fishes, and worms, have all a self-preserving fear of death, which urges them to fly from danger. But few, if any of them, have a tormenting fear arising from the fore-thoughts that they must die. To the body, death is less troublesome than sleep; for in sleep I may have disquieting pains or dreams; and yet I fear not going to my bed. But of this before. If it be the misery after death that is feared, O what have I now to do, but to receive the free reconciling grace that is offered me from heaven, to save me from such misery, and to devote myself totally to him, who hath promised, that those who come to him he will in no wise cast out. But this comes by my selfishness. Had I studied my duty, and then remembered that I am not mine own, and that it is God's part, and not mine, to determine of the duration of my life, I had been quiet from these fruitless fears. But when I fell to myself from God, I am fallen to care for myself, as if it were my work to measure out my days, and now I trust not God, as I should do with his own. Had my resignation and devotedness to him been more absolute, my trust in him would have been more easy. But, Lord, thou knowest that I would fain be thine, and wholly thine; and it is to thee that I desire to live. Therefore let me quietly die to thee, and wholly trust thee with my soul. II. Why should my want of formal conceptions of the future state of separated souls, and my strangeness to the manner of their subsistence and operations, induce me to doubt of those generals, which are evident, and beyond all rational doubting? That souls are substances, and not annihilated, and essentially the same when they forsake the body as before, I doubt not. Otherwise neither the Christians' resurrection, nor the Pythagoreans' transmigration, were a possible thing. For if the soul cease to be, it cannot pass into another body, nor can it re-enter into this. If God raise this body, then it must be by another soul: for the same soul to be annihilated, and yet to begin again to be, is a contradiction. For the second beginning would be by creation, which makes a new soul, and not the same that was before. It is the invisible things that are excellent, active, operative, and permanent: the visible, excepting light which makes all things else visible, are of themselves but lifeless dross. It is the un seen part of plants and flowers which causes all their growth and beauty, their fruit and sweetness. Passive matter is but moved up and down by the invisible active powers, as chess-men are moved from place to place by the gamester's hands. What a lothesome corpse were the world without the invisible spirits and natures that animate, actuate, or move it? To doubt of the being or continuation of the most excellent spiritual parts of the creation, when we live in a world that is actuated by them, and where every thing demonstrates them, as their effects, is more foolish than to doubt of the being of these gross materials which we see. How often have I been convinced that there are good spirits with whom our souls have as certain communion, though not so sensible, as our life hath with the sun, and as we have with one another? That there are evil and envious spirits that fight against our holiness and peace, the authority of the scriptures, and too sad experience of temptations, do surely evince. The marvellous diversity of creatures on earth, for kind and number; yea, the diversity of stars in heaven, as well as the diversities of angels and devils, partly tell me, that though all be of one, and through one, and to one, yet absolute unity is the divine prerogative, and we must not presume to expect such perfection as to lose our specific or numerical diversity, by any union which shall befall our souls. Nor can I reasonably doubt that so noble and active a nature as souls, dwelling above in the lucid regions, in communion with their like, and with their betters, shall be without the activity, the pleasure and felicity which is suitable to their nature, their region, and their company. My Saviour hath entered into the holiest, and hath assured me that there are many mansions in his Father's house, and that when we are absent from the body, we shall be present with the Lord. Organical sight is given me for my use here in the body; a serpent or hawk hath as much or more of this than I have. Mental knowledge reaches further than sight, and is the act of a nobler faculty, and for a higher use. Though it be the soul itself embodied in the spirits that sees, yet it is by a higher and more useful faculty that it understands. Faith is not an understanding act it knows things unseen because they are revealed. Who can think that all believing, holy souls, that have passed hence from the beginning of the world, have been deceived in their faith and hope? That all the wicked worldly infidels, whose hope was only in this life, have been the wisest men, and have been in the right? If virtue and piety are faults or follies, and brutish sensuality be best, then why are not laws made to command sensuality, and forbid piety and virtue? To say this, is to deny humanity, and the wisdom of our Creator, and to feign the world to be governed by a lie, and to take the perfection of our nature for its disease, and our greatest disease for our perfection. But if piety and virtue be better than impiety and vice, the principles and necessary motives of them are certainly true, and the exercise of them is not in vain. What abominable folly and wickedness were it to say that the wicked only attain their ends, and that they all lose their labour, and live and die in miserable deceit, who seek to please God in hope of a better life to come, believing that God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him? Would not this justify the foolish Manichees that thought a bad God made this world; yea, and would infer that he not only made us for a mischief, but rules us to our deceit and hurt, and gives us both natural and supernatural laws, in ill will to us, to mislead us to our misery, and to fill our lives with needless troubles? Shall I not abhor every suggestion that contains such inhuman absurdities as these? Wonderful! that Satan can keep up so much unbelief in the world, while he must make men such fools, that he may make them unbelievers and ungodly. That my soul is no more heavenly, and my foretaste of future blessedness is so small, is partly the fruit of those many wilful sins by which I have quenched the Spirit that should be my comforter. It is partly from our common state of darkness and strangeness, while the soul is in flesh, and operates as the body forms, according to its interest and capacity. Affections are more easily stirred up to things seen, than to things that are both unseen, and known only very defectively, by general, and not by clear, distinct apprehensions. And yet this, O this is the misery and burden of my soul! Though I can say that I love God's truth and graces, his work, and his servants, and whatever of God I see in the world, and that this is a love of God in his creatures, word, and works; yet that I have no more desiring and delightful love of heaven, where his loveliness will be more fully opened to my soul, and that the thoughts of my speedy appearing there are no more joyful to me than they are, is my sin, and my calamity, and my shame: and if I did not see that it is so with other of the servants of Christ, as well as with me, I should doubt whether affections so disproportionable to my profession, did not siguify unsoundness in my belief. It is strange and or print of God's creation; not so much as an shameful, that one that expects quickly to see the glorious world, and to enter the holy, celes tial society, should be no more joyfully affected with these hopes; and that I should make any great matter of the pain, languishing, and perishing of the flesh, when it is the common way to such an end. O hateful sin! that hath so darkened and corrupted souls, as to estrange and indispose them to the only state of their hoped happiness. Alas, what did man when he forsook the love and obedience of his God? How just it is that this flesh and world should become our prison, which we would make our home, and would not use as our Lord appointed us, as our servant and way to our better state. Though our way must not be our home, our Father would not have been so strange to us in the way if we had not unthankfully turned away from his grace and love. It is to us that know not the mysteries of infinite wisdom, the saddest thought that ever possessed our minds, to consider that there is no more grace and holiness, knowledge of God, and communion with him in this world. That so few are saints, and those few so lamentably defective and imperfect. That when the sun shines on all the earth, the Sun of righteousness shines on so small a part of it, and so few live in the love of God, and the joyful hopes of future blessedness; and those few have so low a measure of it, and are corrupted and troubled with so many contrary affections. Infinite goodness is not indisposed to do good: he that made us capable of holy and heavenly affections, gave us not that capacity in vain. Yet, alas, how little of God and glory takes up the hearts of men ! ant hillock to a kingdom, or perhaps to all the earth; and who is scandalized because the world hath an heap of ants in it, yea, or a nest of snakes that are not men ? The vast unmeasurable worlds of light which are above us, are possessed by inhabitants suitable to their glory. A casement or crevice of light, or a candle, in this darksome world, is an unspeakable mercy; yea, that we may hear of a better world, and may seek it in hope. We must not grudge that in our prison we have not that presence of our king, and pleasures of the kingdom, as innocent and free subjects have. Hope of pardon, and a speedy deliverance, are great mercies to malefactors. If my want of the knowledge and love of God, and joyful communion with the heavenly society, be my prison, and as the suburbs of hell, should it not make me long for the day of my redemp tion, and the glorious liberty of the sons of God? My true desires of deliverance, and of holiness and perfection, are my evidences that I shall obtain them. As the will is the sinner, so it is the obstinate continuance of a will to sin which is the bondage, and the cause of continued sin ; and a continued hell is continued sin, as to the first part at least. Therefore they that continue in hell, continue in a sinning will, and so continue in a love and willingness of so much of hell. So far as God makes us willing to be delivered from sin, so far we are delivered; and our initial imperfect deliverance is the way to more. If pains then make me groan for ease, and sickness make me wish for health, why should not my remnants of ignorance, unbelief, and strangeness to God, occasion me to long for the day of my salvation? This is the greatest of all my troubles: But man hath no cause to grudge at God: the and should it not then be the greatest burden devils before their fall were not made indefec- from which I should earnestly desire to be eased? tible. Divine wisdom is delighted in the diver- As grace never doth hurt efficiently, and yet sity of his works, and makes them not all of equal may be ill used, and do hurt objectively, (as to excellency. Free-will was to act its part: hell them that are proud of it) so sin never doth good is not to be as good as heaven; and sin hath efficiently, and of itself, and yet objectively may made earth to be next to hell: so much sin, so do good: for sin may be the object of grace, and much hell. What is sin but a wilful forsaking so to use it is not sin. My unbelief, darkness, of God? Can we forsake him, and yet love disaffection, and inordinate love of this life, him and enjoy his love: God's kingdom is not do of themselves most hinder my desires of to be judged of by his jail or gibbets. We wil- deliverance, and of a better life; but objectively fully forsook the light, and made the world a what more fit to make me weary of such a dungeon to ourselves; and when recovering grievous state? Were my unbelief, and earthly light doth shine unto us, how unthankfully do we mind, predominant, they would chain my afusually entertain it? We cannot have the con- fections to this world; or if I were constrainduct and comfort of it while we shut our eyes edly weary of a miserable life, I should have and turn away. What though God give not all no comfortable hopes of a better. But as it men an overcoming measure, nor to the best so is the nature of my sin to draw down my much as they desire? The earth is but a spot heart from God and glory, it is the nature of my faith, hope, and love to carry it upward, and | For to serve thee, is but to receive thy grace, to desire the heavenly perfection: not to love and to use it for my own, and others' good, and death, but to love that which is beyond it. Have so to glorify thee, and please thy will, which I been so many years in the school of Christ, being love itself, is best pleased when we receive learning both how to live and die, begging and and do most good. studying for this grace, and exercising it against this sinful flesh, and shall I now, after all, find flesh more powerful to draw me downward, than faith, hope, and love, to carry my desires up to God? I have not loved thee as infinite goodness, love itself, and fatherly bounty, should have been loved; but yet I would not forsake thy family: nothing in this world is more my grief, than that I love thee no more; forsake not then a sinner that would not forsake thee, that looks every hour towards thee, that feels it as a piece of hell to be so dark and strange unto thee, that gropes, groans, and presses after thee; feeling, to his greatest sorrow, though thou art every where, that while he is present in the body, he is absent from the Lord. My Lord, I have nothing to do in this world, but to seek and serve thee; I have nothing to do with a heart and its affections, but to breathe after thee; I have nothing to do with my tongue and pen, but to speak to thee, and for thee, and to publish thy glory and thy will: what have I to do with all my reputation, and interest in my friends, but to increase thy church, and propagate thy holy truth and service? What have I to do with my remaining time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy grace, and thy salvation? O pardon all my carnal thoughts, and all my unthankful neglects of thy precious grace, and love, and all my wilful sin against thy truth and thee? Let the fuller communications of thy forfeited grace, now tell me by experience that thou dost forgive me: even under the terrible law thou didst tell man thy very nature, by proclaiming thy name, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, O God, forbid! O thou that freely gavest me thy grace, maintain it to the last against its enemies, and make it finally victorious! It came from thee; it hath been preserved by thee; it is on thy side, and wholly for thee? O let it not now fail, and be conquered by blind and base carnality, or by the temptations of a hellish conquered enemy; without it I had lived as a beast, and without it I should die more miserably than a beast it is thine image which thou lovest; it is a divine nature, and heavenly beam; what will a soul be without it, but a dungeon of darkness, a devil for malignity, and dead to holiness and heaven? Without it, who shall plead thy cause against the devil, world, and flesh? Without thy glory, earth is but earth: without thy natural efficacy it would be nothing: without thy wise and potent ordination it would be but a chaos: without thy grace it would be a hell. O rather deny me the light of the sun, than the light of thy countenance! Less miserable had I been without life or being, than without thy grace. Without thee, and my Saviour's help, I can do nothing; I did not live without thee; I could not pray or learn without thee; I never could conquer a temptation without thee. Can I die, or be prepared to die, without thee? Alas! I shall but say as Philip of Christ, I know not long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and whither my soul is going, and how then shall I truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving know the way? My Lord, having "loved his iniquity, transgression, and sin." Is not the own in the world, did love them to the end." grace of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed in the Thou lovest fidelity and perseverance in thy gospel for our more abundant faith and consolaservants, even those that in his sufferings forsook tion? My God, I know, as I cannot love thee him and fled, yet are commended and rewarded according to thy loveliness, so I cannot trust by Christ, for continuing with him in his temp-thee according to thy faithfulness. I can never tations. Wilt thou forsake a sinner in his ex-be sufficiently confident of thy all-sufficient tremity, who consents to thy covenant, and would power, thy wisdom, and thy goodness. When not forsake thee? My God, I have often sinned I have said, "Will the Lord cast off for ever? against thee, but yet thou knowest I would de- Will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy sire to be thine. I have not served thee with the clean gone for ever? Doth his promise fail to resolution, fidelity, and delight, as such a master generations? Hath God forgotten to be grashould have been served, but yet I would not cious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender forsake thy service, nor change my master or mercies ?" conscience hath replied, that this is my work; I can say with thy servant Paul, that my infirmity: I never wanted comfort because thou art the God "whose I am, and whom I thou wantedst mercy, but because I wanted faith serve;" and O that I could serve thee better! and fitness to receive it and perceive it. But hast thou not mercy also to give me, even that fitness, and that faith? My God, all is of thee, and through thee, and all is to thee, and when I have the felicity, the glory of all for ever will be thine. None that trusts in thee, according to thy nature and promise, shall be ashamed. If I can live and die in trusting in thee, surely I shall not be confounded.'* Why then should it seem a difficult question, how I may willingly leave this world, and my soul depart to Christ in peace? The same grace which regenerated me, must bring me to my desired end, as the same principle of vegetation which causes the end, must bring the fruit to sweet maturity. I. Believe and trust thy Father, thy Saviour, and thy Comforter. II. Hope for the joyful entertainments of his love, and for the blessed state which he hath promised. III. And long by love for nearer union and communion with him and thus, O my soul, thou mayest depart in peace. suitable to their present state and use. When thou art possessed of a better state, thou shalt know it as a possessor ought to do. For such a knowledge as thou lookest after, is part of the possession; and to long, to know, and love in clearness and perfection, is to long to possess. It is thy Saviour, and his glorified ones, that are comprehensors and possessors: and it is his knowledge which must now be most of thy satisfaction. To seek his prerogative to thyself, is vain, usurping arrogance; wouldst thou be a God and Saviour to thyself? O consider how much of the fall is in this selfish care and desire to be as God, in knowing that of good and evil which belongs not to thee, but to God, to know. Thou knowest, past doubt, that there is a God of infinite perfection, who is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Labour more to know thy duty to this God, and absolutely trust him as to the particularities of thy felicity and reward. Thou didst trust thy parents to provide thee food and raiment, when thou didst but dutifully obey them: though they could have forsaken thee or killed thee every hour, thou didst never fear it. Thou hast trusted physicians to give thee even ungrateful medicines, without inquiring after every ingredient, or fearing lest they should wilfully give thee poison. I trust a barber with my throat. I trust a boat-man or ship-master with my life: yea, my horse that might cast me: because I have no reason to distrust them, (sav I. How sure is the promise of God! How suitable to his love, and to the nature of our souls, and to the operations of every grace! It is initially performed here, whilst our desires are turned towards him, and the heavenly seed and spark is here ingenerated in a soul that was dead, and dark, and disaffected. Is it any strange thing for fire to ascend? Yea, or the fiery principle of vegetation in a tree, to carry up the earthy matter to a great height? Is it strange that rivers should hasten to the sea? Whithering their insufficiency and uncertainty as creashould spirits go but to the region or world of tures.) If a pilot undertake to bring thee to the spirits? And whither should Christ's members, Indies, thou canst trust his conduct, though thou and holy spirits go, but to himself, and the hea- know thyself neither the ship, nor how to govern venly society? Is not that a more holy and it, neither the way, nor the place to which thou glorious place and state, than this below? Earth art conveyed. Must not thy God and Saviour is between heaven and hell; a place of gross and be trusted to bring thee safe to heaven, unless passive matter, where spirits may indeed operate he will satisfy all thy inquiries of the individuupon that which needs them, and where they ality and operation of spirits? Leave unsearchmay be detained a while in such operation, or able and useless questions to him that can easily as incorporated forms, if not incarcerated delin-resolve them, and to those to whom the knowquents; but it is not their centre, end, or home. ledge of them doth belong. Even sight and reason might persuade me, that all the noble invisible powers that operate on this lower world, principally belong unto higher; and what can earth add to their essence, dignity, or perfection? a But why, O my soul, art thou so vainly solicitous to have formal, clear, distinct conceptions of the celestial world, and the individuality, and operations of separated souls, any more than of the angels? While thou art the formal principle of an animated body, thy conceptions must be There is a noble pathos, eloquence, and majesty, in the above apostrophe. There is a vast deal of soul thrown into it.-Ed. Thou dost but entangle thyself in sin and self-vexation, while thou wouldst take God's work upon thee, and wouldst know that for thy self, which he must know for thee. Thy knowledge and care for it did not precede nor prepare for thy generation, nor for the motion of one pulse or breath, or for the concoction of one bit of all thy food, or the continuance of thy life one hour; supposing but thy care to use the means which God appointed thee, and to avoid things hurtful, and to beg his blessing. The command of being careful for nothing, and casting all thy care on God, who cares for us, |