unspeakably more excellent and glorious than any thing you have seen, or than can be seen by eyes of flesh.

Why should your mind and thoughts be limited within the narrow bounds of this sublunary world, so small and minute, and, by the apostacy and sin of man, so abject and deformed a part of God's creation? Do not bind down your spirit to the consideration and view of the affairs and concerns only of this region of sin and wretchedness; where few things fall under your notice, that can be a comfortable prospect to a serious spirit. But consider, that as certainly as you behold with your eyes the wickedness and miseries of this forlorn world, that hath forsaken God, and is in great part forsaken by him, so certainly there is a vastly greater world than this, of glorious and innocent creatures, that stand in direct and dutiful subordination to their common Maker and Lord, loving and beloved by him, delighting to do his will, and solacing themselves perpetually in his blessed presence, and in the mutual love, communion, and felicity of one another: to which happy number, or innumerable company rather, as they are called, a the Redeemer is daily adjoining such as he recovers and translates out of the ruins and desolation of this miserable part of the universe.

Reckon yourself as some way appertaining to that blessed society. Mind the affairs thereof as those of your own country, and that properly belong to you. When we are taught to pray, that

a Heb. xii. 22.

the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven, can it be supposed, it ought to be a strange thing to our thoughts, how affairs go there? Surely faith and holy reason, well used, would furnish us with regular and warrantable notions of the state of things above, that we should not need to be, as persons that have no concern therein, or, when we are required to be as strangers on earth, that we should rather make ourselves such to heaven.

Let your mind be much employed in considering the state of things between God and his creatures. Design a large field for your thoughts to spread themselves in, and you will also find it a fruitful one; let them run backward and forward, and expatiate on every side. Think, how all things sprang from God, and among them man, that excellent part of this his lower creation; what he was towards God, and what he is now become. Think of the admirable person, the glorious excellencies, the mighty design, the wonderful achievements and performances of the Redeemer; and of the blessed issue he will bring things to at length.

Think of and study much the nature, parts, and accomplishments of the new creature; get your mind well instructed and furnished with apprehensions of the whole entire frame of that holy rectitude, wherein the image of God upon renewed souls doth consist, and of the several lovely ornaments of the hidden man of the heart, -how it is framed and habited, when it is as it should be, towards God and towards men. Cast

about, and you will not want matter of spiritual employment and exercise for your minds and hearts; nor have occasion-if any expostulate with you, why you mind this earth and the things of sense so much,-to say, you know not what else to think of; you may surely find many things else. If you would use your thoughts to such converse, and thus daily entertain yourself, in this way you may expect a spiritual frame to grow habitual to you; and then would the rest of your business do itself. You would not need to be pressed and persuaded to delight in God, any more than to do the acts of nature, to eat, and drink, and move, and draw your breath.

Endeavour that the knowledge and conception you have of God, may be more distinct and clear. For observe whether, when you would apply yourself to delight in him, this be not the next, or at least one great obstruction, after that of an indisposed carnal heart, that though you would, and you know it is fit you should do so, yet you know not how to go about it; you are at a loss, what or how to conceive of him. But is it fit, it should be always thus? What, ever learning, and never arriving at this knowledge! It is most true, we can never search out the Almighty unto perfection; and it will always be but a little portion we shall know, of that glorious and incomprehensible Being. But since there is a knowledge of God-which we are required to have our souls furnished with, and whereon eternal life depends, with all those gracious dispositions of heart towards him, that are the beginnings of

that life; certainly the whole compass of our duty and blessedness is not all laid upon an impossibility; and therefore, if we do not so far know him as to love and delight in him above all things, this must be through our own great default, and more to be imputed to our carelessness and our contentedness to be ignorant, than to his being unknowable, or so reserving and shutting up himself from us, that we cannot know him. There are many things belonging to the being of God, which we are not concerned to know, and which it would be a vain and bold curiosity to pry into: but what is necessary to direct our practice, and tends to show how we should be towards him, is not (such has been his gracious vouchsafement,) impossible or difficult to be known. We may apprehend him to be the most excellent Being; and may descend to many particular excellencies, wherein we may easily apprehend him infinitely to surpass all other beings.

We most certainly know, all things were of him, and therefore, that whatsoever excellency we can observe in creatures, must be eminently and in highest perfection in him, without the want of any thing but what doth itself import weakness and imperfection. And hath it not been the errand and business into the world, of Him who lay in his bosom, to declare him? And hath not He, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by

a John i. 18.

whom also he made the worlds, who is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person?" He hath been on earth the visible representation of God to men; the divine glory shone in him; "He dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father,) full of grace and truth;"-was not that divine?

Suppose we then, we had seen Christ in the flesh, and been the constant observers of his whole conversation on earth,-and though we have not seen it, we have sufficient records of his life and actions in our hands,-let us, I say, suppose him from day to day before our eyes, in all his meek, humble, lovely deportment among men, and withal in the beams of majesty that appeared through that veil, wherein he was pleased to inwrap himself. If we could observe him going to and fro, and every where doing good, scattering blessings wherever he went; if we could see with what compassion and tenderness he healed the sick, instructed the ignorant, supplied and fed the hungry and necessitous; how he bore with the weak, forgave the injurious (even against his own life,) and wept over secure and obstinate sinners; with what mighty power he cast out devils, raised the dead, commanded winds and seas, and they obeyed him; with what authority, zeal and conviction he contested against an hypocritical generation of hardened, impenitent, unbelieving wretches, casting flames of holy just displeasure in their faces, and threatening them