kind, but all degrees of enjoyment in this kind, that are beneath perfection.

Still it must be remembered, this is not the state of our final rest. The mass of glory is yet in reserve, we are not yet so high as the highest heavens. If we gain but the top of mount Tabor, we are apt to say, It is good to be here, and forget the longer journey yet before us, loth to think of a further advance; when, were our spirits right, how far soever we may suppose ourselves to have attained, it would be matter of continual joy to us to think, high perfections are still attainable; that we are yet capable of greater things, than what we have hitherto compassed; our souls can yet comprehend more. Nature intends what is most perfect in every creature; methinks the divine nature in the new creature, should not design lower, or cease aspiring, till it have attained its ultimate perfection, its culminating point; till grace turn into glory. Let us therefore, christians, bestir ourselves, let us open and turn our eyes upon the eternal glory. Let us view it well, and then demand of our own souls, why are our desires so faint and slothful? why do they so seldom pierce through the intervening distance, and reach home to what they professedly level at; so rarely touch this blessed mark? How can we forbear to be angry with ourselves, that so glorious an end should not more powerfully attract; that our hearts should not more sensibly find themselves drawn; and all the powers of the soul be set on work by the attractive power of that glory? It certainly concerns us, not to sit still under so manifest a distemper. But if the proposal of the object, the discourse (all this while) of this blessed state, do not move us to make some further trials with ourselves, see what urging and reasoning with our souls, what rubbing and chafing our hearts will do. And there is a two-fold trial we may in this kind make upon our spirits: what the sense of shame will work with us; whether our hearts cannot be made sensible to suppose how vile and wretched a temper it is to be undesirous of glory. And then what sense of praise can effect; or what impression it may make upon us to consider the excellency and worth, the high reasonableness of that temper and posture of soul which I am now persuading to, a continual desirousness of that blessed, glorious state.

(1.) As to the former. Let us bethink ourselves, Can we answer it to God or to our own souls, that we should indulge ourselves in a continual negligence of our eternal blessedness? a blessedness consisting in the vision and participation of the divine glory? Have we been dreaming all this while, that God, hath been revealing to us this glorious state, and setting this lovely prospect before our eyes? Did it become us, not to open our eyes while he was opening heaven to us, and representing the state which he designed to bring us to? or will we say, We

have seen it and yet desire it not? Have we been deaf and dead while he hath been calling us into eternal glory; have all our senses been bound up all this while? Hath he been speaking all along to senseless statues, to stocks and stones, while he expected reasonable, living souls should have received the voice, and have returned an obedient, complying answer? And what answer could be expected to such a call (a call to his glory) below this, We desire it Lord, we could fain be there. And if we say we have not been all this while asleep, we saw the light that shone upon us, we heard the voice that called to us; wherewith shall we then excuse ourselves, that our desires were not moved, that our souls were not presently in a flame? Was it then, that we thought all a mere fiction; that we durst not give credit to his word, when it brought us the report of the everlasting glory? Will we avow this? Is this, that we will stand by? Or what else have we left to say? Have we a more plausible reason to ́allege, that the discovery of such a glory moved us not to desire it, than that we believed it not? Sure this is the truth of our case. We should feel this heavenly fire always burning in our breasts, if our infidelity did not querch the coal. If we did believe, we could not but desire. But do not the thoughts of this shake our very souls, and fill us with horror and trembling? We that should be turned into indignation, and ready to burn ourselves with our own flame, and all about us, if one should give us the lie; that we should dare to put the lie upon the eternal truth: upon him whose word gave stability and being to the world, who made and sustains all things by it! That awful word! That word that shivers rocks, and melts down mountains, that makes the animate creation tremble, that can in a moment blast all things, and dissolve the frame of heaven and earth, (which in the mean time it upholds :) is that become with us fabulous, lying breath! Those God-breathed oracles, those heavenly records, which discover and describe this blessed state, are they false and foolish legends? Must that be pretended at last (if men durst) that is so totally void of all pretences? What should be the gain or advantage accruing to that eternal, all-sufficient Being? What accession should be made to that infinite self-fulness by deluding a worm? Were it consistent with his nature; what could be his design to put a cheat upon poor mortal dust? If thou dare not impute it to him; such a deception had a beginning, but what author canst thou imagine of it, or what end? Did it proceed from a good man or bad? Could a good and honest man form so horribly wicked a design, to impose a universal delusion, and lie upon a world, in the name of the true and holy God? Or could a wicked mind frame a design so directly levelled against wickedness! Or is there any thing so aptly and naturally tending to form the world to sobriety, holiness, purity of conversation, as the discovery of this future state of glory? And since the belief

of future felicity is known to obtain universally among men, who could be the author of so common a deception? If thou hadst the mind to impose a lie upon all the world, what course wouldst thou take? How wouldst thou lay the design? Or why dost thou in this case imagine what thou knowest not how to imagine? And dost thou not without scruple believe many things of which thou never hadst so unquestionable evidence? Or must that faith, which is the foundation of thy religion and eternal hopes, be the most suspected, shaking thing with thee; and have, of all other, the least stability and rootedness in thy soul? If thou canst not excuse thy infidelity, be ashamed of thy so cold and sluggish desires of this glorious state.

And doth it not argue a low, sordid spirit, not to desire and aim at the perfection thou art capable of; not to desire that blessedness which alone is suitable and satisfying to a reasonable and spiritual being? Bethink thyself a little; How low art thou sunk into the dirt of the earth? how art thou plunged into the miry ditch, that even thine own clothes might abhor thee? Is the Father of spirits thy father? is the world of spirits thy country? hast thou any relation to that heavenly progeny? art thou allied to that blessed family; and yet undesirious of the same blessedness? Canst thou savour nothing but what smells of the earth? Is nothing grateful to thy soul, but what is corrupted by so vicious and impure a tincture? Are all thy delights centred in a dunghill; and the polluted pleasures of a filthy world better to thee than the eternal visions and enjoyments of heaven? What art thou all made of earth? Is thy soul stupified into a clod? Hast thou no sense with thee of any thing better and more excellent? Canst thou look upon no glorious thing with a pleased eye? Are things only desirable and lovely to thee, as they are deformed? O consider the corrupted, distempered state of thy spirit, and how vile a disposition it hath contracted to itself! Thine, looks too like the mundane spirit; the spirit of the world. The apostle speaks of it διακριτικώς, by way of distinction ; εἴδωμεν. 1 Cor. 2 12. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, that we might know, or see (and no doubt it is desire that animates that eye; it is not bare speculative intuition and no more) the things freely given us of God. Surely he whose desire doth not guide his eye to the beholding of those things, hath received the spirit of the world only. A spirit that conforms him to this world, makes him think only thoughts of this world, and drive the designs of this world, and speak the language of this world. A spirit that connaturalizes him to the world, makes him of a temper suitable to it he breathes only worldly breath, carries a wordly aspect, is of a worldly conversation. O poor low spirit, that such a world should withhold thee from the desire and pursuit of such glory! Art thou not ashamed to think what thy desires are wont to pitch

upon, while they decline and waive this blessedness? Methinks thy very shame should compel thee to quit the name of a saint or a man to forbear numbering thyself with any that pretend to immortality, and go seek pasture among the beasts of the field, with them that live that low, animal life that thou dost, and expect no other.

And when thou so fallest in with the world, how highly dost thou gratify the pretending and usurping god of it? The great fomenter of the sensual, worldly genius: the spirit itself that works in the children of disobedience, (Eph. 2. 2. 3.) and makes them follow the course of the world, holds them fast bound in worldly lusts, and leads them captive at his will; causes them (after his own serpentine manner) to creep and crawl in the dust of the earth. He is most intimate to this apostate world; informs it (as it were) and actuates it in every part; is even one great soul to it. The whole world lies in that wicked one, (1 John. 5. 19.) as the body, by the best philosophers, is said to be in the soul. The world is said to be convicted when he is judged. John 16. 8-12. He having fallen from a state of blessedness in God, hath involved the world with himself in the same apostacy and condemnation; and labors to keep them fast in the bands of death. The great Redeemer of souls makes this his business, to loose and dissolve the work of the devil. 1 John 3. 8. With that wicked one thou compliest against thy own soul and the Redeemer of it, while thou neglectest to desire and pursue this blessedness. This is thy debasement, and his triumph; thy vile succumbency gives him the day and his will upon thee. He desires no more than that he may suppress in thee all heavenly desires, and keep thee thus a slave and a prisoner (confined in thy spirit to this low, dark dungeon) by thy own consent. While thou remainest without desire after heaven, he is secure of thee, as knowing then thou wilt take no other way, but what will bring thee unto the same eternal state with himself in the end. He is jealous over thee, that thou direct not a desire, nor glance an eye heaven-ward. While thou dost not so, thou art entirely subject, and givest as full obedience to him, as thy God requires to himself in order to thy blessedness. But is it a thing tolerable to thy thoughts, that thou shouldst yield that heart-obedience to the devil against God? And this being the state of thy case, what more significant expression canst thou make of the contempt of divine goodness? O the love that thou neglectest, while the most glorious issue and product of it is with thee an undesired thing! Yea, this the thing itself speaks, were there no such competition. What, that when eternal love hath conceived, and is travailing to bring forth such a birth; that when it invites thee to an expectation of such glory shortly to be revealed, the result of so deep counsels and wonderful works, this should be the return

from thee, I desire it not! Is this thy gratitude to the Father of glory, the requital of the kindness, yea, and of the blood of thy Redeemer? If this blessedness were not desirable for itself, methinks the offerer's hand should be a sufficient endearment. But thou canst not so divide or abstract, it consists in beholding and bearing his glorious likeness who invites thee to it; and therefore in the neglect of it thou most highly affrontest him.

Yea further, is it not a monstrous unnaturalness towards thyself, as well as impiety towards God, not to desire that perfect, final blessedness? Doth not every thing naturally tend to its ultimate perfection and proper end? What creature would not witness against thee, if thou neglect, in thine own capacity and kind, to aim at thine? Surely thou canst not allow thyself to think any thing beneath this, worthy to be owned by thee, under that notion, of thy highest good and thy last end. But that thy spirit should labor under an aversion towards thy highest good, towards thy blessedness itself, is not that a dismal token upon thee? If thou didst disaffect and nauseate the things in which thy present life is bound up, and without which thou canst not live, wouldst thou not think thy case deplorable? What dost thou think will become of thy soul, whose everlasting life is bound up in that very good which thou desirest not; which cannot live that life without that good, nor with it, if thou hast no desire to it? O the eternal resentments thy soul will have of this cruelty! to be withheld from that wherein its life lies! Wouldst thou not judge him unnatural that should kill his brother, assassinate his father, starve his child? What shall be said of him that destroys himself? How may that soul lament that ever it was thine; and say, O that I had rather been of any such lower kind, to have animated a fly, to have inspirited a vile worm, rather than to have served a reasonable beast, that by me knew the good it would never follow, and did not desire! But if thou hast any such desires, in a low degree, after this blessedness, as thou thinkest may entitle thee to the name thou bearest, of a saint, a christian; is it not still very unnatural to pursue a good, approved by thy stated judgment as best in itself, and for thee, with so unproportionable, so slothful desires? For the same reason thou dost desire it at all, thou shouldst desire it much; yea, and still more and more, till thou attain it, and be swallowed up into it. Thy best and last good thou canst never desire too much. And let it be considered by thee, that the temper thou thinkest thyself innocent of, an habitual prevalent disaffection to the true blessedness of saints, may for ought thou knowest be upon thee; while it appears thou art so very near the borders of it; and it appears not with such certainty that thou partakest not in it. It is not so easy a matter, critically to distinguish and conclude of the lowest degree (in hypothesi, or with application to thy own case) of that de