heart truly fixed upon God, and upon the offices of a holy worship. He that loaths good meat is sick at heart, or near it; and he that despises, or hath not a holy appetite to the food of angels, the wine of elect souls, is fit to succeed the prodigal at his banquet of sin and husks, and to be partaker of the table of devils: but all they who have God's spirit love to feast at the supper of the Lamb, and have no appetites but what are of the spirit, or servants to the spirit. I have read of a spiritual person, who saw heaven but in a dream, but such as made great impression upon him, and was represented with vigorous and pertinacious phantasms, not easily disbanding; and when he awaked he knew not his cell, he remembered not him that slept in the same dorture, nor could tell how night and day were distinguished, nor could discern oil from wine; but called out for his vision again: Redde mihi campos meos floridos, columnam auream, comitem Hieronymum, assistentes angelos; Give me my fields again, my most delicious fields, my pillar of a glorious light, my companion St. Jerome, my assistant angels. And this lasted till he was told of his duty, and matter of obedience, and the fear of a sin had disencharmed him, and caused him to take care lest he lose the substance out of greediness to possess the shadow.

And if it were given to any of us to see paradise, or the third heaven, (as it was to St. Paul) could it be that ever we should love any thing but Christ, or follow any guide but the spirit, or desire any thing but heaven, or understand any thing to be pleasant but what shall lead thither? Now what a vision can do, that the spirit doth certainly to them that entertain him. They that have him really, and not in pretence only, are certainly great despisers of the things of the world. The spirit doth not create, or enlarge our appetites of things below: spiritual men

are not designed to reign upon earth, but to reign over their lusts and sottish appetites. The Spirit doth not inflame our thirst of wealth, but extinguishes it, and makes us to esteem all things as loss, and as dung, so that we may gain Christ. No gain then is pleasant but godliness, no ambition but longings after heaven, no revenge but against ourselves for sinning; nothing but God and Christ: Deus meus, et omnia and date nobis animas, caetera vobis tollite, (as the king of Sodom said to Abraham,) secure but the souls to us, and take our goods. Indeed this is a good sign that we have the spirit.

St. John spake a hard saying, but by the spirit of manifestation we are all taught to understand it: Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The seed of God is the spirit, which hath a plastick power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei, into the image of the sons of God, and as long as this remains in us, while the spirit dwells in us, we cannot sin; that is, it is against our natures, our reformed natures to sin. And as we say, we cannot endure such a potion, we cannot suffer such a pain; that is, we cannot without great trouble, we cannot without doing violence to our nature: so all spiritual men, all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them, they cannot sin; cannot without trouble, and doing against their natures, and their most passionate inclinations. A man, if you speak naturally, can masticate gums, and he can break his own legs, and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of aloes, and rhubard, of henbane, or the deadly nightshade; but he cannot do this naturally, or willingly, cheerfully, or with delight, every sin is against a good man's nature: he is ill at ease when he hath missed his usual prayers, he is

* 1 Ep. iii. 9.

amazed if he have fallen into an errour, he is infinitely ashamed of his imprudence; he remembers a sin as he thinks of an enemy, or the horrours of a midnight apparition for all his capacities, his understanding, and his choosing faculties are filled up with the opinion and persuasions, with the love and with the desires, of God. And this, I say, is the great benefit of the spirit, which God hath given to us as an antidote against worldly pleasures. And therefore St. Paul joins them as consequent to each other: [For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, &c.*] First, we are enlightened in baptism, and by the spirit of manifestation, the revelations of the Gospel: then we relish and taste interiour excellencies, and we receive the Holy Ghost, the spirit of confirmation, and he gives us a taste of the powers of the world to come; that is, of the great efficacy that is in the article of eternal life, to persuade us to religion and holy living: then we feel that as the belief of that article dwells upon our understanding, and is incorporated into our wills and choice, so we grow powerful to resist sin by the strengths of the spirit, to defy all carnal pleasure, and to suppress and mortify it by the powers of this article: those are the powers of the world to come.

2. The spirit of God is given to all who truly belong to Christ, as an antidote against sorrows, against impatience, against the evil accidents of the world, and against the oppression and sinking of our spirits under the cross. There are in scripture noted two births besides the natural; to which also by analogy we may add a third. The first is to be born of water and the spirit. It is iv dix dv, one thing signified

*Heb. vi. 4

Now the

by a divided appellative, by two substantives, [water and the spirit,] that is, spiritus aqueus, the spirit moving upon the waters of baptism. The second is to be born of spirit and fire, for so Christ was promised to baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire; that is, cum spiritu igneo, with a fiery spirit, the spirit as it descended in Pentecost in the shape of fiery tongues. And as the watery spirit washed away the sins of the church, so the spirit of fire enkindles charity and the love of God. το πυρ καθαίρει, το ύδως άγνίζει, (says Plutarch) the spirit is the same under both the titles, and it enables the church with gifts and graces. And from these there is another operation of the new birth, but the same spirit, the spirit of rejoicing, or spiritus exultans, spiritus laetitiae. God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. There is a certain joy and spiritual rejoicing, that accompanies them in whom the Holy Ghost doth dwell; a joy in the midst of sorrow; a. joy given to allay the sorrows of secular troubles, and to alleviate the burthen of persecution. This St. Paul notes to this purpose; [And ye became fol lowers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.t] Worldly afflictions and spiritual joys may very well dwell together; and if God did not supply us out of his store-houses, the sorrows of this world would be more and unmixed, and the troubles of persecution would be too great for natural confidences. For who shall make him recompense that lost his life in a duel fought about a draught of wine, or a cheaper woman? What arguments shall invite a man to suffer torments in testimony of a proposition of natural philosophy? And by what instruments shall we

comfort a man who is sick, and poor, and disgraced, and vicious, and lies cursing, and despairs of any thing hereafter? That man's condition proclaims what it is to want the spirit of God, the spirit of comfort. Now this spirit of comfort is the hope and confidence, the certain expectation of partaking in the inheritance of Jesus, This is the faith and patience of the saints; this is the refreshment of all wearied travellers, the cordial of all languishing sinners, the support of the scrupulous, the guide of the doubtful, the anchor of timorous and fluctuating souls, the confidence and the staff of the penitent. He that is deprived of his whole estate for a good conscience, by the spirit he meets this comfort, that he shall find it again with advantage in the day of restitution: and this comfort was so manifest in the first days of Christianity, that it was no unfrequent thing to see holy persons court a martyrdom with a fondness as great as is our impatience and timorousness in every persecution. Till the spirit of God comes upon us we are youx. Inopis nos atque pusilli finxerunt animi we have little souls, little faith, and as little patience; we fall at every stumbling block, and sink under every temptation; and our hearts fail us, and we die for fear of death, and lose our souls to preserve our estates or our persons, till the spirit of God fills us with joy in believing: and the man that is in a great joy cares not for any trouble that is less than his joy; and God hath taken so great care to secure this to us, that he hath turned it into a precept, Rejoice evermore; and Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. But this rejoicing must be only in the hope that is laid up for us, id ag so the apostle, rejoicing in hope. For although God some

;

*Thes. v. 16.

† Rom. xii. 12.

VOL. II.

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