of the oil of joy, garments of praise, everlasting joy on their heads; the budding and blossoming of the rose; the time of the singing of birds; the joy of banquets and marriage-feasts: and they represent the lifeless part of the creation as joining in the triumph of God's people, the mountains and hills breaking forth before them into singing, and all the trees of the fields clapping their hands; besides many other bright images, whose scope is to shew, that a life of faith and holiness is the way to the greatest solid joy here, as well as hereafter.

If many sincere believers do not attain to all these joys, yet that cannot weaken the force of the argument in view; they must impute the imperfections of these joys to the weakness of their faith and love. It is sufficient to our purpose, that God proposes such motives to holiness, as should excite men to higher and higher advancements in it. It is certain, all these joys have been attained by some good men, and are offered to all; and even those who never felt any of them, may yet reasonably be persuaded of the reality of them, by considering the nature of faith, and all the duties of the covenant of grace on the one hand, and the promises of it on the other.

If we consider the nature and design of holiness, it is not merely a preparation for happiness, but also an ingredient of it. And it is a very just as well as common observation, That grace is glory in the end; it is an imitation of the disposition and employment of those who are already happy, and consequently has the nearest resemblance to their state. Nothing can be more evident in the nature of the thing, than that the true happiness of the soul must increase in proportion to its union to the infinite source of all happiness and joy.

Faith in Christ has for its object the gladdest tidings we can conceive, and the greatest gift we can desire. The love of God contemplates infinitely amiable excellency and beauty, and lays hold on all-sufficiency. The sincere and gracious love of our neigh

bour is so delightful a duty, that all the pleasures of society, which even wicked men enjoy, are founded on some resemblances of it. Meekness, humility and disengagement of mind from the world, give such serenity and tranquillity of spirit, as is inestimable. Contemplation is one of the most valuable enjoyments in the world: A great part of holiness consists in the noblest kind of it; all we can know, is either something concerning God or his creatures; and surely the noblest view of the latter is in the contemplating of their relation to the former: all of them manifest his glory; and therefore if we were accustomed to consider them in that light, whatever way we turned our view, every sensible object might be matter of spiritual joy. To all which we may add, that the well-grounded hope of eternal happiness, if duly improved, is a greater present pleasure than any earthly enjoyment whatsoever.

If we consider, on the other hand, the promises of the covenant of grace, it is plain that God promises to his people, not only future happiness, but also present peace, pardon of sin, strength to perform duty, acceptance of it, communion with himself, comfort under affliction, returns of prayer; and which comprehends numberless blessings, that he will make all things work together for their good, and let nothing separate them from his love. These are the present encouragements God proposeth to duty; and surely, they are incomparably more important than any other motives which the devil or wicked men can offer against it.

Let us take a short view, in the next place, of the present troubles that natively flow from wickedness, many of which are peculiar to it. This will serve to vindicate God's holiness, and to show his goodness in the frame of our nature, in contriving it so, that those things that are contrary to our greatest interest should be at the same time inconsistent with our present ease; which is surely a very rational motive to avoid

them. Perhaps indeed many of those uneasinesses that attend sin may be the absolutely necessary consequences of it. Thus it is necessary in the nature of the thing, that desires and passions that cannot be fully satisfied, should be exceedingly tormenting; but it is no less certain, than many of the troubles that are inseparable from sin, are not so properly owing to the necessity of the thing, as to a good and wise contrivance for making it more hateful to us.

The two great sources of our sinful actions, are unruly desires and bitter passions; and they are the great sources of our troubles as well as our sins. As to the former, it was observed already, how they entangle mens minds almost in a constant train of perplexities and disquiet, painful impatience, superfluous toil, anxiety, loathing, grief and vexation. Bitter and malicious passions are no better, but rather worse; they tend to make us enemies to our fellowcreatures, and make them so to us; and are the greatest enemies of all themselves. When they ex

ert themselves with vigour, they are like furious storms and tempests, filling the soul with disorder and confusion, and making it like troubled waters, when they cannot rest. When they cannot be satisfied, they frequently rack and harrass mens breasts with pains that cannot be described, and that sometimes with such violence, as unhinges the frame of their nature, and ruins soul and body at once. When they are gratified, and obtain their end, if it gives any joy, it is but the joy of devils, and such pleasure as is in hell, that is to say, pleasure in the niisery of others. Instead of that, oftentimes they have been observed to turn to a thousand melancholy wishes, that they had been restrained; sometimes one passionate word or action proves the beginning of a long chain of confusion, strife, contention, and all the other wormwood that embitters human life; which would be vastly more tolerable and pleasant than it is, notwithstanding all its other disasters, were it not for those furies in mens own breasts, which not only

lead them to misery, but anticipate it, and torment them before the time.

It would be too long to enumerate even all the remarkable present disadvantages that attend wickedness; such as comfortless affliction, and unsatisfying prosperity, dismal fears of death, and confounding fore-thoughts of judgment and eternity, (which will be sometimes so importunate as to force their way through all the amusements and diversions that are made use of to keep them out), remorse of conscience, which is a refined sort of pain, when the blood of sprinkling is not applied for curing it. Every vice seems to have some way of punishing itself. Pride makes every affront almost a torment; envy hinders a man from relishing his own enjoyment, till he see his neighbour's misery; impiety makes those thoughts and discourses of God (which otherwise would be ravishing) to be uneasy and perplexing. While men entertain such plagues in their souls, it is of little importance to their peace and happiness, that all is right without, when all is wrong within: In the midst of magnificent buildings, sumptuous feasts, gay cloathing, and all the other fantastic pageantry he can desire, the slave of sin is still but a painted sepulchre, outwardly bright and beautiful, inwardly full of filth and rottenness. From all which it is evident, that God is so far from being the author even of any temporal motives to sin, that he has ordered matters so, that the rational motives against it, even in this life, are incomparably superior to any that can be adduced for it.

Beside the troubles annexed to sin, whose proper tendency is certainly to restrain it, we may observe likewise several principles God has implanted inwardly in the frame of our nature, and several things he has established in the order of providence, that have a very native tendency to the same good end, and in numberless instances are effectual that way. Thus it is God, that has given us the faculty of reason, by which, no doubt, men avoid many sinful actions; and

if they improved it right would hate every sin. We are obliged in justice to thank God for giving us that faculty, and to blame our sins, and not him, for our voluntary abuse or neglect of it. If a poor man receive a thousand talents in a gift, every body will own that he is obliged to acknowledge his benefactor for all the good things he purchases by that money, and to blame himself only, if he misimproves and squanders away any part of it. And indeed, if we inquire narrowly into the nature of sin, we shall find, that every sin is an abuse of some good gift that God has given us, which is in itself good, and might have been improved to excellent purposes.

It is God that has implanted in men that natural conscience, which is, as it were, God's lieutenant or deputy in the soul, and which gives such an indelible sense of the difference between moral good and evil, that they who cherish sin most in themselves, cannot oftentimes but hate it in others, so that a man abhors his own corruptions when he sees them in his nearest friends, or in the child of his bosom. Thus they who are most addicted to pride, oppression, treachery, or ingratitude, do frequently condemn these when practised by others; and though this natural conscience is far from hindering every sin, yet certainly it hinders and restrains a great many. It is a principal means of hindering the world from running into a chaos; and all its good influence that way is owing to God.

Further; God has implanted in us that thirst after complete happiness, which is the spring of mens actions; and since the above mentioned faculty of reason shows where that thirst may be satisfied, the direct tendency of both, if duly improved, would be to lead the soul to the eternal Fountain of all good. God has also planted in us several principles which should tend to promote our love to him and his creatures; as for instance, that delight in the contemplation of things that are most perfect and excellent in their kind, which, if duly improved, would excite us