find other objects, and become sensual and impure, and at length turn all to gall and wormwood.

It may be, you have known some of much pretence to piety, that would allow themselves the liberty of being otherwise very pleasant in their usual conversation; by which you may imagine, that delight in God (which you cannot suppose such persons unacquainted with) may fairly consist with another sort of delight. Nor indeed is it to be doubted but it may; for the rules and measures, which the holy God hath set us, import no such rigorous severity, nor confine us to so very narrow bounds, but that there is scope and latitude enough left to the satisfaction of sober desires and inclinations that are of a meaner kind. He that hath adjoined the inferior faculties to our natures, and at first created a terrestrial paradise for innocent man, never intended to forbid the gratification of those faculties, nor hath given us any reason to doubt, but that the lower delights, that are suitable to them, might be innocently entertained. Nay, the very rules themselves of temperance and sobriety, which he hath given us for the guiding and governing of sensitive desires, plainly imply, that they are permitted; for that which ought not to be, is not to be regulated, but destroyed. But then, whereas such rules so limit the inclinations and functions of the low animal life, as that they may be consistent with our end, and subservient to it; how perverse and wicked an indulgence to them were it, to oppose them at once both to the authority of him that

set us those rules, and to our very end itself! That delight in the things of this lower world, which is not by the divine law forbidden or declared evil, either in itself, or by the undue measure or season thereof, is abundantly sufficient for our entertainment, while we are in this. our earthly pilgrimage; and so much can never hurt us, nor hinder our higher delights. God hath fenced and hedged them in for us, as a garden inclosed, by his own rules and laws set about them; so that we cannot prejudice or impair them, but by breaking through his inclosure. Our great care and study therefore must be, so to repress and mortify all earthly and sensual inclinations, that they be reduced to a conformity and agreement with his rules and measures; to which they who have no regard, and yet highly pretend to spirituality and to delight in God, only make a fair show, and speak great swelling words of vanity, while their hearts taste nothing of what their tongues utter. Spiritual joy is a severe thing, separated from vain and unbecoming levities as well as from all earthly impurities, and only grows and flourishes in a soul that is dead to this world, and alive to God through Jesus Christ.

See then to the usual temper of your spirit; and do not think it enough, that you hope the great renewing change did sometime pass upon it, and that therefore your case is good and safe, and you may now take your ease and liberty. But be intent upon this, to get into a confirmed growing spirituality, and that you may find you

b

a

are in your ordinary course after the spirit; then will you savour the things of the spirit, and then especially will the blessed God himself become your great delight, and your exceeding joy. Retire yourself from this world, draw off your mind and heart. This is God's great rival. The friendship of this world is emnity to him,— which is elsewhere said of the carnal mind; that is indeed the same thing, viz., a mind that is over friendly affected towards this world, or not chastely; wherefore also, in that fore-mentioned Scripture, they that are supposed and suspected to have made themselves, in that undue sense, friends of this world, are bespoken under the names of adulterers and adulteresses. You must cast off all other lovers, if you intend delighting in God.

Get up into the higher region, where you may be out of the danger of having your spirit ingulphed and, as it were, sucked up by the spirit of this world, or of being subject to its debasing stupifying influence. Bear yourself as the inhabitant of another country. Make this your mark and scope, that the temper of your spirit may be such, that the secret of the divine presence may become to you as your very element, wherein you can most freely breathe and live and be most at ease, and out of which you may perceive you cannot enjoy yourself; and that whatever tends to withdraw you from him, may be sensibly painful and grievous to you. Do not look upon it as a hopeless thing, you

a Rom. viii. 5. b Psal. xliii. 4. e Jam. iv. 4. b Rom. viii. 7.

should ever come to this; some have come to it: "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple."a Nor was this only a transient fit with the Psalmist, but we frequently find him speaking the same sense, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." And, again, we have the like strains; "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord God of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord blessed are they that dwell in thy House."c And what was this House more to him than another house, save that here he reckoned upon enjoying the divine presence? So that here was a heart so naturalized to this presence, as to seek an abode in it, and that he might lead his life with God, and dwell with him all his days; he could not be content with giving a visit now and then.

Why should this temper of spirit, in the clearer light of the Gospel, be looked upon as an unattainable thing? A lazy despondency, and the mean conceit that it is modest not to aim so high, starve religion, and stifle all truly noble and generous desires. Let this then be the thing designed with you; and constantly pursue and drive the design, that you may get into this disposition of spirit towards God. His Spirit will not be

a Psal. xxvii. 4. b Ibid. xxiii. 6. c Ibid. lxxxiv. 2.

a

restrained, if it be duly sought and dutifully complied with and obeyed, if you carefully reserve yourself for him, as one whom he hath set apart for himself. If you will be entirely his, and keep your distance, using a holy chaste reservedness as to other things, that is, to such things as any way tend to indispose your spirit towards him, or render it less suitable to his converse, He will be no stranger to you. And that it may be more suitable and fit for him, you should habituate and accustom yourself to converse in general with spiritual things. You will be, as the things are with which you most converse; they will leave their stamp and impress on you: wandering after vanity, you will become vain; minding earthly things, you will become earthly. Accordingly, being much taken up with spiritual things, you will bear their image, and become spiritual.

Think how unworthy it is, since you have faculties, and those now refined and improved by Divine light and grace, and capable of being employed about much higher objects than those of sense, that you should yield to a confinement to so low and mean things; whence it is, that when you should mind things of a higher nature, it is a strange work with you, and those things with which you should be most familiar, seem odd and uncouth to you, and are all with you as mere shadow and darkness. Urge on your spirit; make it enter into the invisible world. May you not be assured, if you will use your understanding, that there are things you never saw,

a Ps. iv. 3.