diligence; that you deny yourself, crucify the flesh, be temperate, just, merciful, patient? Do you aim at obeying him in these things? Can you say, "Lord, for thy sake I refrain the things, to which my heart inclines?" Hath his prohibition any restraining force upon your heart? Do you not allow yourself to be licentious, earthly, vain, proud, wrathful, revengeful, though you know it will offend him? And is this your love to him, or delight in him?

Do you bear good will to him, whose reproach and dishonour you are not concerned for, yea, whom you stick not to dishonour and reproach, whose interest among men hath no place in your thoughts, whose friends are none of yours, whose enemies are your friends, whose favour you care not for, nor regret his frowns, whose worship is a burden to you (so that you had rather do any thing than pray to him), and his fellowship an undesired thing? Make an estimate by these things of the temper of your hearts towards God; and consider, whether it bespeak delight in him, or not rather habitual aversion and enmity.

It may be, you will admit these things seem to carry somewhat of conviction with them, but say, "they concern many that are taken for godly persons and lovers of God, as well as they do you." It may be, many such may take themselves for godly persons and lovers of God, and be mistaken as well as you; what will that amend your cause? If these things will prove a person one that hath no delight in God, they

equally prove it as to you and others,-which will make nothing to your advantage.

ness.

But if they who have sincere love to God, are in a degree peccant against the laws of such love, they are more ready to accuse themselves than other men; they abhor themselves, that they do not more entirely delight in God, and repent in dust and ashes. It better becomes you, to imitate their repentance, than glory in their sinful weakWhen did you check and contend with your own hearts upon these accounts, as they are wont to do? If these things, in a degree found in them, prove their delight in God imperfect, their prevailing contraries will however prove it sincere. If you will not now understand the difference between the imperfection or the total want of his love, between having your heart and soul imperfectly alive towards God or perfectly dead,-God grant you may not hereafter, at a more costly rate.

You may further say, God is out of your sight, and therefore how can it be expected you should find a sensible delight in him? But is he out of the sight of your minds? If he be, what would you infer, but that you cannot delight in him at all, and therefore that you do not. He is out of sight by the high excellency of his Being,—for which reason, he should be delighted in with a deeper delight, though not like that you take in the things of sense,—and he hath been so beyond all things, notwithstanding his abode in that light which is inaccessible. This therefore is con

fession without excuse; and would never be offered as an excuse by any, but those who are lost in flesh and sense, who have forgot they have reasonable souls, and had rather be numbered with brutes than men. As if there were not many things you have not seen with the eyes of flesh, more excellent than those you have! Or, as if you had no other faculty than eyes of flesh to see with!

Do you not acknowledge the blessed God to be the best and most excellent good? as being the first and fountain good, the fullest and most comprehensive, the purest, the most immutable and permanent good? How plain and certain is this! How manifestly impossible is it, if there were not such a good, that otherwise any thing else should ever have been good, or been at all! Is not this as sure and evident, as any thing your senses can inform you of? Whence is the glorious excellency of this great creation, or the beauty, loveliness, pleasantness of any creature? Must not all that, and infinitely more, be originally in the great Creator of all? This, if you consider, you cannot but see and own.

While then your own hearts tell you, you delight not in God, do not your consciences begin to accuse and judge you, that you deal not righteously in this matter? And ought it not to fill your souls with horror, when you consider that you take no delight in the best and sovereign good,-when you look into your hearts, and find that you not only do not delight in God, but you cannot, and this, from the want not of the natural

power, but of a right inclination? Should you not with astonishment bethink yourselves, every one for himself,-"What is this that is befallen me; I am convinced, this is the best good, every way most worthy of my highest delight and love, and yet my heart tastes it not!" You can have no pretence to say, that because your heart is disinclined, therefore you are excused; for you only do not what, through an invincible disinclination, you apprehend you cannot do. But you should bethink yourself, "What a wretch am I, that am so ill inclined!" For is not any one more wicked, according as he is more strongly inclined to wickedness, and averse to what is good? But how vincible or invincible your disinclination is, you do not yet know, not having yet made due trial. That you cannot of yourselves overcome, is out of question: but have you tried, what help might be got from heaven, in the use of God's own prescribed means? If that course bring you in no help, then may you understand how much you have provoked the Lord. For though he hath promised, that for such as turn at his reproof, he will pour out his spirit to them; yet they who, when he calls, refuse,—and when he stretches out his hand, regard not, but set at naught all his counsel,-may call and not be answered, may seek him early and not find him." And that wickedness may somewhat be estimated by this effect, that it makes the Spirit of grace retire, makes that free, benign, merciful Spirit,

a Prov. i. 28.

the author of all love, sweetness, and goodness, become to a forlorn soul a resolved stranger. If you are so given up, you have first given up yourselves; you have wilfully cast him out of your thoughts, and hardened your own hearts against Him, who was the spring of your life and being, and in whom is all your hope. And whether this malignity of your hearts shall ever finally be overcome or no,—as you have no cause to despair but it may be overcome, if, apprehending your life to lie upon it, you wait and strive, and pray and cry, as your case requires, yet do you not see it to be a fearful pitch of malignity? and so much the worse and more vicious, the more hardly it is overcome?

That we may here be a little more particular: Consider, how tumultuous and disorderly a thing this your disaffection is. You are here to consider its direct tendency, or what it doth in its own nature lead to. If you may withdraw your delight and love from God, then so may all other men as well. Therefore, now view the thing itself in the common nature of it. Is not aversion to delight in God a manifest contrariety to the order of things, a turning of all upside down, a shattering and breaking asunder the bond between rational appetite and the first good? Is it not a disjointing and unhinging of the best and noblest part of God's creation from its station and rest, its proper basis and centre? How fearful a rupture doth it make! If you could break in pieces the orderly contexture of the whole universe within itself, reduce the