03.04. CHAP. IV. The active and vigorous nature of true religion proved by many scriptural ,,,

CHAP. IV The active and vigorous nature of’ true religion proved by many scriptural phrases of the most porverful importance — more particularly explained in three things — 1. In the soul’s continual care and study to be good — 2. In its care to do good — 3. In its powerful and incessant longings after the most full enjoyment of God.

I COME now to the second property of true religion, which is to be found in this phrase, “ springing up,” or leaping up; wherein the activity and vigorousness of it is described. Keligion, though it be compared to water, yet is no standing pool of water, but “ a well of water springing up.”“ And here the proposition that I shall establish, is, “ That true religion is active and vigorous.” It is no lazy and languid thing, but full of life and power: so I find it every where described in scripture, by things that are most active, lively, vigorous, operative, spreading, powerful, and sometimes even by motion itself. As sin is, in scripture, described by death and darkness, which are a cessation and privation of life, and light, and motion: so religion is described by life, which is active and vigorous; by an angelical life, which is spiritual and powerful; yea, a divine life, which is, as I may say, most lively and vivacious. “ Christ liveth in me,” and the production of this new nature in the soul is called a quickening, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;’“* and the reception of it, a “passing from death unto life.”*’ Again, as sin and wickedness are described by flesh, which is sluggish and inactive, so this holy principle in the soul is called spirit, “ The spirit lusteth against the flesh; "yea, the “spirit of power,’“ and the “spirit of life,”

— “ The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death/^ How can the power and activity of any principle be more commended, than by saying it is life, and the “ spirit of life,” and “the law of the spirit of life” in the soul? which hath made me sometimes to apply those words of the Prophet, as a description of every pious soul, “ I am full of power and might by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Yea, further, the holy Apostle seems to describe a godly principle in the soul by activity and motion itself, Php 3:12-14; where he gives this excellent character of himself, and this lively description of his religious disposition, as if it were nothing else but activity and fervour; I follow after, that I may apprehend; I forget those things that are behind, and reach forth unto those things that are before; I press towards the mark, &c. It were too much to comment upon those phrases of like importance, “labouring, seeking, striving, fighting, running, wrestling, panting, longing, hungering, thirsting, watching,” and many others, which the Holy Ghost makes use of in the scriptures, to express the active, industrious, vigorous, diligent, and powerful nature of this divine principle, which God hath put into the souls of his people. The streams of divine grace, which flow forth from the throne of God, and of the Lamb, into the souls of men, do not cleanse them, and so pass away, like some violent land-flood, that washes the fields and meadows, and so leaves them to contract as much filth as ever; but the same becomes a “ well of water,” continually springing up, boiling, and bubbling, and working in the soul, and sending out fresh rivers, as our Saviour calls them — “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

But, more particularly to unfold the active nature of this divine principle in the soul, we shall consider it in these three particulars, namely, as it is still conforming to God, doing for him, and longing after him.

1. The active and sprightly nature of true godliness, or religion planted by God in the soul, shows itself in a continued care and study to be good, to conform more and more to the nature of the blessed God, the glorious pattern of all perfection. The nature of God being infinitely and absolutely perfect, is the only rule of perfection to the creature. If we speak of goodness, our Saviour tells us, that God alone is good; of wisdom, the Apostle tells us, that God is only wise; of power, he is omnipotent; of mercy and kindness, he is love itself. Men are only good by way of participation from God, and in a way of assimilation to him: so that, though good men may be imitated, and followed, yet it must be with this limitation, as far as they are followers of God: the great Apostle durst not press his example any further — “ Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” But the nature of God being infinitely and absolutely perfect, is to be eyed and imitated singly, entirely, universally, in all things wherein the creature is capable of following him, and becoming like unto him. So Christians are required to look up unto the Father of lights, the fountain of all perfections, and to take from him the pattern of their dispositions, and conversation, and to eye him, continually, and eyeing him, to derive an image of him, not into their eye, as we do by sensible objects, but into their souls, to polish and frame them into the most clear and lively resemblances of him; that is, in the language of scripture, to be “ perfect, as their heavenly Father is perfect, to be “ holy as God is holy.” And thus the genuine children of God are described by the Holy Ghost, they are “ followers of God.’’ This is the shortest, but the surest and clearest mark that can be given of a good man, “a follower of God.” They are not owned for the children of God, who are created by him, nor they who have a notional knowledge of him, who profess him, or exhibit some external worship and service to him in the world, but they that imitate him: the true children of Abraham were not those that were descended from him, or boasted of him, but they that did the works of Abraham, John 8:39; even so are they only the offspring of heaven, the true and dear children of the living God, who are followers of him; “ be ye followers of God as dear children.’“’ A pious soul having its eyes opened, to behold the infinite beauty, purity, and perfection, of that good God, whose nature is the very fountain, and must, therefore, be the rule of all goodness, presently comes to undervalue all created excellencies, both in itself, and all the world besides, as to any satisfaction that is to be had in them, or any perfection that can be acquired by them, and cannot endure to take up with any lower good, or live by any lower rule than God himself. A pious man, having the unclean and rebellious spirit cast out, and being once reconciled to the nature of God, is daily labouring to be more intimately united thereunto, and to be all that God is, as far as he is capable, — the nature of God being infinitely more pure and perfect, and more desirable than his own. Religion is a participation of life from him, who is life itself, and so must needs be an active principle, spreading itself in the soul, and causing the soul to spread itself in God: and, therefore, the kingdom of heaven, which, in many places of the gospel, 1 take to be nothing else but this divine principle in the soul, which is both the truest heaven, and most properly a kingdom (for thereby God doth most powerfully reign and exercise his sovereignty, and most excellently display and manifest his glory in the world) is compared to “ seed sown in good ground,’“ which both springeth up into a blade, and bringeth forth fruit; to mustardseed, which spreadeth itself, and groweth great, so that the birds of the air may lodge in the branches thereof; to leaven, spreading itself through the whole quantity of meal, and leavening the whole, and all the parts of it. By a like similitude, the path of the just is compared to a shining light, whose glory and lustre increaseth continually, “shining more and more unto the perfect day;” which continual growing up of the holy soul into God, is excellently described by the Apostle, in an elegant metaphor, “ We all, with open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory;” that is, from one resemblance of divine glory to another. The gracious soul not being contented with its present attainments, and having in its eye a perfect and absolute good, forgets that which is behind, and labours, prays, strives, and studies, to get the perfections of God more clearly copied out upon itself, and itself, as much as may be, swallowed up in the divinity. It covets earnestly these best things, to be perfected in grace and holiness, to have divine characters more fair and legible, divine impressions more deep and lively, divine life more strong and powerful, and the communicable image of the blessed God spread quite over it, and through it. A pious soul is not content to receive of Christ’s fulness, but labours to be filled with the fulness, with all the fulness of God; he rejoices indeed that he hath received of Christ grace for grace, as a child hath limb for limb with his father; but this his joy is not fulfilled, except he find himself adding daily some cubits to his infant-stature; nor indeed then either, nor can it be, until he come to the measure of the stature of his Lord, and be grown up unto him in all things who is the head, even Christ. He delights and glories in God, beholding his spices growing in his soul; but that does not satisfy him, except he may see them flowing out also. He is neither barren nor unfruitful, as the Apostle Peter speaks; but that is not enough, he desires to be fat and fruitful also, as a watered garden, as the Prophet expresseth it, even as the garden of God. The spirit lusteth against the flesh, and struggles with it in the same womb of the soul, as Jacob with Esau, until he had cast him out. The seed of God warreth continually against the seed of the serpent, raging and restless, like Jehu, shooting, and stabbing, and strangling all he meets with, till none at all remain of the family of that Ahab who had formerly been his master. O how does the pious and devout soul long to have Christ’s victory carried on in itself, to have Christ going on in him conquering and to conquer, till at length the very last cnemv be subdued, that tlic Prince of Peace may ride triumphantly through all the coasts and regions of his heart and life, and not so much as a dog move his tongue against him! This holy principle which is of God in the soul, is actually industrious too; it doth not fold the arms together, hide its hand in its bosom, faintly wishing to obtain a final conquest over its enemies, but advances itself with a noble stoutness against lusts and passions, even as the sun glorieth against the darkness of the night, until it have chased it all away. The pious soul puts itself under the banner of Christ, fights under the conduct of the angel of God’s presence, and so marches up undauntedly against the children of Anak, those earthly loves, lusts, sensual affections, which are indeed taller and stronger than all other enemies that encounter it in this wilderness state: and the gracious God is not wanting to such endeavours, he “ remembering his promise, helpeth his servant,” even that promise, that “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.”“ A true Israelitish soul, impregnated with this noble and heroic principle, is not like those slothful Israelites, that were content with what they had got of the holy land, and either could not, or cared not to enlarge their border. But he makes war upon the remainder of the Canaanites, and is never at rest until he have, with Sarah, cast out the bondwoman and her son too. You may see an emblem of such a soul in Moses holding up his hands all the day long, till Amalek was quite discomfited, Exodus 17:12. As often as the floods of temptation, springing from the devil, the world, or the flesh, do offer to come in upon him, he opposeth them in the strength of Christ; or, if you will, in the Prophet’s phrase, “ The Spirit of the Lord lifteth up a standard against them;” so that he is not carried down by them, or, at least, not overwhelmed with them. In the beginning of my discourse upon this head, I hinted to you the reason why the pious soul continually studies conformity to God, even because he is the perfect and absolute Good, and the soul reckons that its happiness consists only in being like unto him, in partaking of a divine nature. But I might also here take occasion to speak of three things, which I will but briefly name, and so pass on.

(1.) A godly man reckons with himself, that conformity to the image and nature of God, is the most proper conversing with God in the world. The great, and indeed only employment of an immortal soul, is to converse with its Creator; for this end it was made, and made so capacious as we see it, now, to partake of a divine nature, to be endued with a God-like disposition, is most properly to converse with God; this is a real, powerful, practical, and feeling converse with him, infinitely to be preferred before all notions, professions, performances, or speculations.

(2.) A godly man reckons that the image of God is the glory and ornament of the soul; it is the lustre, and brightness, and beauty of the soul, as the soul is of the body. Holiness is not only the duty, but the highest honour and dignity that any created nature is capable of: and therefore the pious soul, who hath his senses exercised to discern good and evil, pursues after it, as after his full and proper perfection.

(3.) A godly man reckons, that conformity to the divine image, participation of a divine nature, is the surest and most comfortable evidence of divine love, which is a matter of so great inquiry in the world. By growing up daily in Christ Jesus, we are infallibly assured of our implantation into him. The Spirit of God descending upon the soul in the impressions of meekness, kindness, uprightness, which is a dove-like disposition, is a better, and more desirable evidence of our sonship, and God’’s favour towards us, than if we had the Spirit descending upon our heads in a dove-like shape, as it did upon our blessed Saviour. These are the reasons, why the sincere Christian, above all things, labours to become God-like, to be formed more and more into a resemblance of the Supreme Good, and to drink in divine perfection into the very inmost of his soul.

2. The active and industrious nature of true godliness, or religion, manifests itself in a good man’s continual care, and study to do good, to serve the interest of the holy and blessed God in the world. A good man being mastered with the sense of the infinite goodness of God, and the great end of his life, cannot think it worth while to spend himself for any inferior good, or bestow his time and strength for any lower end than that is; and therefore, as it is the main happiness of his life to enjoy God, so he makes it the main business of his life to serve him, to be doing for him, to lay out himself for him, and to display, and propagate his glory in the world. And, as he is filled with apprehensions of the Supreme Goodness, which doth infinitely deserve, and may justly challenge, all that he can do or expend for him, so he doth indeed really partake of the active and communicative nature of that blessed Being, and himself becomes active and communicative too: a pious soul, sluggish and inactive, is as if one should say, a pious soul altogether unlike to God; a pure contradiction. I cannot dwell upon any of those particular designs of serving the interest of God’s glory, which a good man is still driving on in the world: only this, in general, whether he pray, or preach, or read, or celebrate Sabbaths, or administer private reproof or instruction, or indeed plough or sow, eat or drink, all this while he lives not to himself, but serves a higher interest than that of the flesh, and a higher good than himself, or any created being. A true christian activity doth not only appear in those things which we call duties of worship, or religious performances; but in the whole frame of the heart contriving, and the conversation expressing and unfolding the glory of God. A lioly, serious, heavenly, humble, sober, righteous, and self-denying course of life, does most excellently express the divine glory, by imitating the nature of God, and most effectually calls all men to the imitation of it; according as our Saviour hath nakedly stated the case, “ Hereby is my Father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit:’“ by which fruits are not to be understood only preaching, praying, conference, which are indeed high and excellent duties; but also righteousness, temperance, self-denial, which things are pure reflections of the divine image, imd a real glorifying of God”’s name and perfections. A good Christian cannot be content to be happy alone, to be still drawing down lieaven into his own soul; but he endeavours also by prayer, counsel, and holy example, to draw up the souls of other men heaven-ward. This God witnesseth of Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children, and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord. And this Moses doth excellently witness of himself in that holy rapture of his, “ Would God that all the Lord”*s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them;*” By such examples as these a good man desires to live, yea, by higher precedents than either Abraham or Moses, even by the example of the Father and of the Son, he admires and strives to imitate that character which is given of God himself, “ Thou art good, ijnd dost good f’ and that which is given of Christ-Jesus, the Lord of life, who “went about doing good:*” who also witnessed elsewhere concerning himself, that he came not into the world to do his own will, nor seek his own glory, but the will and glory of him that sent him: and again, “ Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

O how happy would the pious soul count itself, if it could but live and converse in the world, in the same manner, and with the same devout, fervent, exalted spirit, as Christ Jesus did, whose meat and drink it was still to be doing the will, and advancing the glory of his Father! But, alas! the poor soul finds itself ensnared by passions, and selfish affections from within, clogged with an unwieldy body, and distracted with secular affairs from without, that it cannot rise so nimbly, run so swiftly, nor serve the infinite and glorious God so cheerfully, nor liberally, as it would; and therefore the poor prisoner sighs within itself, and wishes that it might escape: but finding a certain time determined upon it in the body, which it must be content to live out, it looks up, and is ready to envy the angels of God, because it cannot live as they do, who are always upon God’s errand, and almost thinks much that itself is not a ministering spirit, serving the pure and perfect will of the Supreme Good, without grudging or ceasing. The pious soul, under these powerful apprehensions of the nature of God, the example of Christ, and the honourable office of the holy angels, is ready to grudge the body that attendance that it calls for, and those offices which it is forced to perform to it; as judging them impertinent to its main happiness, and most excellent employment; it is ready to envy that more cheerful and willing service, which it finds from the heavy and drossy body with which it is united; and to cry out, O that I were that to my God, which my body, my eyes, hands, and feet, are to me! for I say to one of these, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Do this, and he doth it. In a word, a good man being acquainted feelingly with the highest Good, eyeing diligently the great end of his coming into the world, and his short time of being in it, serves the eternal and blessed God, lives upon eternal designs, and by consecrating all his actions unto God, gives a kind of immortality to them, which are in themselves flitting and transient: he counts it a reproach to any man, much more to a good man, to do anything insignificantly, much more to live impertinently; and he reckons all things that have not a tendency to the highest Good, and a subserviency to the great and last end, to be impertinencies, yea, and absurdities in an immortal soul, which should continually be “springing up into everlasting life.’“

3. The active and vigorous nature of true religion manifests itself in those powerful and incessant longings after God, with which it fills that soul in which it is planted. This I superadd to the two former, because the religious man though he be formed into some likeness to God, yet desires to be more like him; and though he be somewhat serviceable to him, yet desires to be more instrumental in doing his will: though he be good, yet he desires to be better; and though he do good, ye he desires to do better, or at least more. And, indeed, I reckon that these sincere and holy hungerings after God, which I am going to speak of, are one of the best signs that I know in the world of spiritual health, and the best criterion of a true Christian: for, in this low and animal state, we are better acquainted with lovings and languishings, than with fruition or satisfaction; and the best enjoyment that we have of God in this world is but scant and short, indeed but a kind of longing to enjoy him. Love is certainly a high and noble affection; but, alas! our love, whilst we are here in the body, is in its non-age, in its weak and sickly state, rather a longing than a loving, much unlike to what it will be wlien it shall be grown up unto its perfect stature in glory. But this sickly kind of languishing affection is a certain symptom of a healthful constitution; or as the Apostle calls it, of ’^the spirit of a sound mind.”“ Pious souls are thirsty souls, always gasping after the living springs of divine grace, even as the parched desart gapeth for the dew of heaven, the early and the latter rain.

One would wonder what kind of magic there was in Elijah’s mantle, that the very casting of it upon Elisha should make him leave oxen and plough yea, father and mother, and all, to run after a stranger: Elijah himself seems to wonder at it, What have I done to thee?” O but what a mighty charm is there in divine love! which when it is once shed abroad in the soul, makes the soul to spread itself in it and to it, as the sun-flower attending the motions of the sun, and turning itself every way towards it, welcoming its warm and refreshing beams. Elijah passing by Elisha as he was at plough, and catching him with his mantle, is but a scant resemblance of the blessed God passing by a carnal mind, and wrapping it in the mantle of his love, and thereby causing it to run, yea, to fly swiftly after him. If divine grace do but once touch the soul, the soul presently adheres to it, as the needle to the loadstone. They that heard Christ Jesus chiding the winds and the waves, cried out, “ What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?^’’ but if one had been present when he called James and John from their nets, Matthew from the custom-house, and Zaccheus from the tree, and by calling made them willing to come, he surely would have cried out, What manner of God is this! that, by his bare word makes poor men leave their trades and livelihood, and rich men their gainful exactions, usuries, oppressions, to follow him, and shows them no reasons why. What a mighty virtue is there in the ointment of Christ’s name, that as soon as it is poured out, the virgins fall in love with him? Micah cried out when he was in pursuit of his gods, and should they ask him what ailed him? And will ye wonder that a holy soul, in pursuit of the holy God, should be in earnest; that he should run, and cry as he runs? as I have seen a fond child whom the father or mother have endeavoured to leave behind them. God breathing into the soul, makes the soul breathe after him, and in a mixture of holy disdain and anger, to thrust away from itself all distracting companions, occasions, and concerns, saying with Ephraim to her idols, “ Get ye hence.” The soul thus inspired is so far from prostituting itself to any earthly, sensual, selfish lusts, and loves, that it cannot brook anything that would weaken it in the prosecution of the highest good; it is impatient of every thing that would either stop or slacken its motions after God. The pious man desires still to be doing something for God indeed; but if the case so fall out, that he cannot spend his life for God as he desires, yet he will be spending his soul upon him, though he cannot perpetually abide upon the knee of prayer, yet he would be continually upon the wing of faith and love: when his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth, that he cannot speak for God, yet his soul will cleave uMto him, and complain because it can speak no longer; for faith and love are knitting graces, and do long to make the soul as much one with their object, as is possible for the creature to be with its Creator. Religion puts a restless appetite into the soul after a higher Good, and makes it throw itself into his arms, and wind itself into his embraces, longing to be in a more intimate conjunction with him, or rather entirelywrapped up in him; itself is an insatiable and covetous principle in the soul, much like to the daughter of the horseleech, crying continually, “ Give, give/’* What the Prophet speaks rhetorically of hell, is also true concerning this offspring of heaven in the soul, “ it enlargeth itself, and openeth its mouth without measure.”’’’ The spirit of true godliness seems to be altogether such that it cannot rest in any measure of gi-ace, or be fully contented with any of its attainments in this life; but ardently longs to receive the more plentiful communications of love, the more deep and legible impressions of grace, the more clear and ample experiences of divine assistance, the more sensible evidences of divine favour, the more powerful and transporting illapses and incomes of divine consolation into itself; “ let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.”’’’ Such is the spirit of true godliness, that the weakest that is endued with it, longs to be as David, and the Davids to be as God, as the angel of the Lord, according to that promise, “ In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.” The pious soul, that is in his right senses, under the powerful apprehensions of the loveliness of God, and the beauty of holiness, cannot be content to live by any lower instance than that of David, whose soul even broke for the longing that it had unto the Lord, or that of the spouse, who was even sick of love. You have read of the mother of Sisera looking out at the window, waiting for his coming, and crying through the lattice, “ Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?’’ But this is not to be compared to the earnest expectation of the creature, the new creature, waiting for the manifestation of God; which the Apostle elegantly expresseth, and yet seems to labour for words, as if he could not sufficiently express it either, Romans 8:19. You have read of the Israelites marching up towards the promised land, and murmuring that they were held so long in the wilderness; but the true Israelitish soul makes more haste with less discontent, marches as under the conduct of the angel of God’s presence, and longs to arrive at its rest: but, alas! it is held in the wilderness too; and therefore cannot be fully quiet in itself, but sends forth spies to view the land, the scouts of faith and hope, like Caleb and Joshua, those men of another spirit; and these go and walk through the holy land, and return home to the soul, and come back, not as Noah’s dove with an olive leaf in her mouth, but with some clusters in their hands they bring the soul a taste of the good things of the kingdom, of the glories of her eternal state: yea, the soul itself marches up to possess the land, goes out, with the Church in the Canticles, to meet the Lord, to seek him whom her soul loveth. Religion is a sacred fire kept burning in the temple of the soul continually, which being once kindled from heaven, never goes out, but burns up heaven-wards, as the nature of fire is, this fire is kept alive in the soul to all eternity, though sometimes, through the ashes of earthly cares and concerns cast into it, or the sun of earthly prosperity shining upon it, it may sometimes burn more dimly, and seem almost as if it were quite smothered: this fire is for sacrifice too, though sacrifice be not always offered upon it; the same fire of faith and love which offered up the morning sacrifice is kept alive all the day long, and is ready to kindle the evening sacrifice too, when the appointed time of it shall come. In this chariot of fire it is that the soul is continually carried out towards God, and accomplisheth a kind of glorification daily; and when it finds itself firmly seated and swiftly carried herein, it no longer envies the translation of Elijah. The spirit of sanctification is in the soul as a burning fire shut up in the bones, which makes the soul weary with forbearing, and so powerful in longings that it cannot stay; as the spirit of prophecy is described, Jer. xx. It is more true of the Spirit of God than of the spirit of Elihu, the spirit within constraineth, and even presseth the soul, so that it is ready to swoon and faint away for very vehemence of longing. See the delighted spouse falling into one of these fainting fits, and crying out mainly for some cordial from heaven to keep up her sinking spirits, “ Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.*’’ O beautiful and blessed sight, a soul working towards God, panting, and longing, and labouring after its proper happiness and perfection! Well, the sinking soul is relieved; Christ Jesus reacheth forth his left hand to her head, and his right hand embraceth her; and now she recovers, her hanging hands lift up themselves, and the beauties of her fading complexion are restored; now she sits down “under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit is sweet unto her taste.” "See here the fairest sight on this side heaven; a soul resting, and glorying, and spreading itself in the arms of God, growing up in him, growing great in him, growing full in his fulness, and perfectly transported with his pure love! O my soul, be not content to live by any lower instance? “ Did not our hearts burn within us,”“ said the two disciples one to the other, “whilst he talked with us?’’’ But the soul in which the sacred fire of love is powerfully kindled, doth not only burn towards God, whilst he is more familiarly present with it, and, as it were, blows upon it; but if he seem to withdraw from it, it burns after him still; “ My beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone; I sought him; I called him.”“ And if the fire begin to languish, and seem as if it would go out, the holy soul is startled presently, and labours, as the Apostle speaks, to revive it, and blow it up again, calls upon itself to awake, to arise and pursue, to mend its pace, and to speed its heavy and sluggish motions. This divine active principle in the soul maintains a continual striving, a holy struggling and stretching forth of the soul towards God, a bold and ardent contention after the Supreme Good; religion hath the strength of the divinity in it, its motions towards its object are quick and potent. That elegant description which the Prophet makes of the wicked heart, with some change, may be brought to express this excellent temper of the pious soul; it is like the working sea which cannot rest: and although its waters do not cast up mire and dirt, yet in a holy impatience, they rise and swell, and cast themselves up high towards heaven. In a word, that I may comprize many things in few expressions, no man so ambitious as the humble, none so covetous as the heavenly-minded, none so voluptuous as the self-denying: religion gives a largeness and wideness to the soul, which sin, and self, and the world, had straitened and confined; but his ambition is only to be great in God, his covetousness is only to be filled with all the fulness of God, and his voluptuousness is only to drink of the rivers of his pure pleasures: he desires to enjoy the God whom he sees, and to be satisfied with the God whom he loves. O now, how are all the faculties of the soul awakened to attendance upon the Lord of life! It hearkens for the sound of his feet coming, the noise of his hands knocking at the door; it stands upon its watch-tower waiting for his appearing, waiting more earnestly than they that watch for the morning, and rejoices to meet him at his coming; and having met him, runs into his arms, embraces him, holds him, and will not let him go, but brings him into the house, and entertains him in the guest-chamber: the soul complains that itself is not large enough, that there is not room enough to entertain so glorious a guest, no, not though it have given him all the room that it hath, it receives him with the widest arms, and the sweetest smiles; and if he depart and withdraw, fetches him again with the deepest sighs, Retiurn, return, O Prince of Peace, and make me an everlasting habitation of righteousness unto thyself!

It will not be amiss here briefly to touch upon the reason of the pious souFs so ardent pantings after God. And here I might show first, negatively, that it springs not from any carnal ambition of being better and higher than others, not from any carnal hope of impunity and safety, nor merely from the bitter sense of pressing and tormenting afflictions in this life. But I shall rather insist upon it affirmatively. These earnest breathings after God spring from the feeling apprehensions of self-indigency and insufficiency, and the powerful sense of divine goodness and fulness; they are produced by the divine bounty and self-sufficiency, manifesting itself to the spirits of men, and conceived and brought forth by a deep sense of selfpoverty; one might almost apply the Apostle’’s words to this purpose, “We receive the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in him.’““ I shall not discourse upon these two heads disjointly, but frame them into one i-dea, and so you may take it thus; these holy longings of the pious soul after God, do arise from the sense of its distance from God. To be so far distant from God who is life and love itself, and the proper and full happiness of the soul, is grievous to the soul that is rightly affected towards him: and hence it is that the soul cannot be at rest, but still longs to be more intimately joined to him, and more perfectly filled with him: and the clearer the souFs apprehensions are of its object, and the deeper its sense is of its own unlikeness to him, and distance from him, the more strong and impatient are its breathings; insomuch that not only fear, as the Apostle speaks, but even love itself sometimes seems to itself to have a kind of agony and torment in itself; which made the Church cry she was sick of love, that is, sick of every thing that kept her from her love, sick of that distance at which she stood from her beloved Lord. The pious soul being delighted with the infinite sweetness and goodness of God, longs to be that rather than what itself is, and beholding how it is estranged from him, by many sensual loves, selfish passions, corporeal clogs, and distractions, bewails its distance, and cries out within itself, “ O when shall I come and appear before God! ^’ O when will God come and appear gloriously to me and in me! “ Who will deliver me from this body of death!” O that mortality were swallowed up of life! David’s soul waited for God as earnestly, and more properly than they that watch for the morning; they may be said rather to be weary of the long, and cold, and troublesome night, than properly covetous of the day; but he, out of a pure and spiritual sense of his estrangement from God, longs to appear before him, and be wrapped up in him. Heal the godly man of all his afflictions, grievances, and adversities in the world, that he may have nothing to trouble him, nor put him to pain, yet he is not quiet, he is in pain because of the distance at which he stands from God, give him the whole world, and all the glory of it, yet he has not enough; he still cries, and craves.

Give, give; because he is not entirely swallowed up in God: he openeth his mouth wide, as the Psalmist speaks, and all the silver, and gold, peace, health, liberty, preferment, that you impart to it, cannot fill it; because they are not God, he cannot look upon them as his chief good. In a word, a pious man doth not so much say, in the sense either of sin or affliction, “ O that one would give me the wings of a dove, that I might fly away, and be at rest! ““ as in the sense of his dissimilitude to, and distance from God, O that one would give me the wings of an angel, that I might fly away towards heaven!