are some things which the exigency of our present state makes necessary to us here, which will not be so in the state of glory; repentance, faith, as it respects the mediator, in order to our future happiness; patience of injuries, pity to the distressed, &c. These things, and whatsoever else, whose objects cease, must be understood to cease with them. In short, here is requisite all that moral good which concerns both our end and way; there, what concerns our end only.

Yet is the whole compass of that gracious frame of spirit, requisite in this our present state, all comprehended in conformity to God. Partly, inasmuch as some of these graces, which will cease hereafter, in their exercise, as not having objects to draw them forth into act, have their pattern in some communicable attributes of God, which will cease also, as to their denomination and exercise; their objects then ceasing too, as his patience towards sinners, his mercy to the miserable. Partly inasmuch as other of those graces now required in us, though they correspond to nothing in God that is capable of the same name, as faith in a Saviour, repentance of sin (which can have no place in God) they yet answer to something in his nature, that goes under other names; and is the reason whereof he requires such things in us. He hath in his nature that faithfulness and all sufficient fulness, that challenges our faith; and that hatred of sin, which challenges our repentance for it, having been guilty of it. His very nature obliges him to require those things from us, the state of our case being considered. So that the sum even of our present duty lies in receiving this entire impression of the divine likeness, (in some part invariably and eternally necessary to us, in some part necessary with respect to our present state.) And herein is our present blessedness also involved. If therefore we have any design to better our condition in point of blessedness, it must be our business to endeavor after a full participation of that likeness, in all the particulars it comprehends. You can pitch your thoughts upon no part of it, which hath not an evident direct tendency to the repose and rest of your spirits. I shall commend only some few instances, that you may see how little reason and inducement a soul conformed to the holy will of God, hath to seek its comforts and contents elsewhere. Faith corresponds to the truth of God, as it respects divine revelations. How pleasant is it to give up our understandings to the conduct of so safe a guide; to the view of so admirable things as he reveals! It corresponds to his goodness, as it respects its offers. How delectable is it to be filling an empty soul from the divine fulness! What pleasure attends the exercise of this faith towards the person of the Meditator, viewing him in all his glorious excellencies, receiving him in all his gracious communications by this eye and hand. How pleasant is it to exercise it in reference to another world!

living by it in a daily prospect of eternity; in reference to this world, to live without care in a cheerful dependance on him that hath undertaken to care for us!

Repentance is that by which we become like the holy God: to whom our sin hath made us most unlike before. How sweet are kindly relentings, penitential tears, and the return of the soul to its God, and to a right mind! And who can conceive the ravishing pleasures of love to God! wherein we not only imitate, but intimately unite with him, who is love itself. How pleasant to let our souls dissolve here, and flow into the ocean the element of love! Our fear corresponds to his excellent greatness, and is not (as it is a part of the new creature in us) a tormenting, servile passion, but a due respectfulness and observance of God; and there is no mean pleasure in that holy awful seriousness unto which it composes and forms our spirits. Our humility, as it respects him, answers his high excellency; as it respects our own inferiors, his gracious condescension. How pleasant is it to fall before him! And how connatural and agreeable to a good spirit, to stoop low, upon any occasion to do good! Sincerity is a most God-like excellency; an imitation of his truth, as grounded in his all-sufficiency; which sets him above the necessity or possibility of any advantage by collusion or deceit and corresponds to his omnisciency and heart-searching eye. It heightens a man's spirit to a holy and generous boldness: makes him apprehend it beneath him to do an unworthy, dishonest action, that should need a palliation, or a concealment.* And gives him the continual pleasure of self-approbation to God, whom he chiefly studies and desires to please. Patience, a prime glory of the divine majesty, continues a man's possession of his own soul, his liberty, his dominion of himself. He is (if he can suffer nothing) a slave to his vilest and most sordid passions at home, his own base fear, and brutish anger, and effeminate grief, and to any man's lusts and humors besides, that he apprehends can do him hurt. It keeps a man's soul in a peaceful calm, delivers him from (that most unnatural) selftorment, defeats the impotent malice of his most implacable enemy, who fain would vex him, but cannot. Justice, the great attribute of the Judge of all the earth, as such; so far as the impression of it takes place among men, preserves the common peace of the world, and the private peace of each man in his own bosom, so that the former be not disturbed by doing of mutual injuries, nor the latter by the conscience of having done them. The brotherly love of fellow-christians; the impression of that special love, which God bears to them all, admits them

*As that noble Roman whom his architect (about to build him a house) promised to contrive it free from all his neighbors inspection; he replies, nay, if thou have any art in thee, build my house so that all may see what I do. Vell. Pat. p. 32.

into one another's bosoms, and to all the endearments and pleasures of a mutual communion. Love to enemies, the express image of our heavenly Father; by which we appear his children, begotten of him; overcomes evil by goodness, blunts the double edge of revenge; at least the sharper edge, (which is always towards the author of it,) secures ourselves from wounding impressions and resentment; turns keen anger into gentle pity; and substitutes mild pleasant forgiveness, in the room of the much uneasier thoughts and study of retaliation. Mercifulness toward the distressed, as our Father in heaven is merciful, heaps blessing upon our souls, and evidences our title to what we are to live by, the divine mercy. A universal benignity and propension to do good to all; an imitation of the immense, diffusive goodness of God, is but kindness to ourselves, rewards itself by that greater pleasure there is in giving than in receiving; and associates us with God in the blessedness of this work, as well as in the disposition to it; who exercises loving kindness in the earth, because he delighteth therein.

Here are some of the μιμήματα τῆς Θείας ζωής, or the things wherein consists that our conformity to the divine nature and will, which is proper to our present state. And now, who can estimate the blessedness of such a soul? Can (in a word) the state of that soul be unhappy that is full of the Holy Ghost, full of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, those blessed fruits of that blessed Spirit? Blessedness is connaturalized unto this soul: every thing doth its part, and all conspire to make it happy. This soul is a temple, an habitation of holiness. Here dwells a Deity in his glory. It is a paradise, a garden of God. Here he walks and converses daily, delighted with its fragrant fruitfulness. He that hath those things and aboundeth, is not barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus: He is the sun, and the knowledge of him, the quickening beams that cherish and ripen these fruits. But the soul that lacketh these things is a desert, a habitation of devils. Here is stupid, disconsolate infidelity, inflexible obstinacy and resolvedness for hell, hatred and contempt of the sovereign majesty; whom yet, its secret misgiving thoughts tell it, will be too hard for it at last. Here is swollen pride and giddy vain-glory, disguised hypocrisy and pining envy, raging wrath and ravenous avarice, with what you can imagine besides, leading to misery and desolation.

You have then some prospect of a happy temper of spirit. It can now be no difficulty to you, to frame an idea of it in your thoughts, to get a notional image (or this likeness in the notion of it) into your minds; but that will avail you little, if you have not the real image also; that is, your spirits really fashioned and formed according thereto : if having the knowledge of these things, (as the pagan moralist's expression, before mentioned, is of virtu

ous rules and precepts, Philosophia hæc dividitur in scientiam et habitum animi, unam illam qui didicit et facienda ac vitanda et præcepit nondum sapiens est nisi in ea quæ didicit animus ejus transfiguratus est.* Senex Agrippa epist. 94.) they become not habitual to you, and your spirits be not transfigured in them. But now, I treat with such as are supposed to have some such real impressions, that they may be stirred up to endeavor a further perfecting of them. In order whereto, I shall add but this two-fold advice:

[1.] Be very careful that this living image (such you have been formerly told it is) may grow equally in every part. See that the impression of this likeness be entire, that it be not a mained thing; if it be, God will never own it as his production. Integrity is the glory of a christian; to be entire, lacking nothing. This is the soundness of heart that excludes a blushing consciousness and misgiving; exempts it from the fear of a shameful discovery. Let my heart be sound in thy statutes; is paraphrased, by having respect to all God's commandments; (Psal. 119. 6. 80.) to which is opposite, that being partial in the law, spoken of by the prophet (Mal. 2. 9.) by way of complaint concerning the priests of that time. A thing hateful in the eye of God, and as uncomfortable to ourselves, as to be without a leg or an arm. And see that it be preserved entire by a proportional and uniform growth, that fresh life and motion may daily appear in every limb of this heavenly new creature. How odious a deformity is it, when a shew of moral virtues excludes godliness? And how much more odious (inasmuch as there is more impudent falsehood in it, and more dishonorable reflection upon God) when under a high pretence of godliness, any shall allow themselves in visible immorality? What to be oppressive, envious, contentious, deceitful, proud, turbulent, wrathful, morose, malicious, fretful, and peevish, and yet a christian? What serious person, that shall have no fairer representation of Christianity than such do give, would not be ready to say rather, Sit anima mea cum Philosophis, If this be Christian religion, give me honest paganism? A christian that hath received the proper, uniform, entire impress of the gospel of Christ, is the most meek, mild, calm, harmless thing in the world. Never mention so venerable a name, if you will not be jealous of the honor of it. Will you give God occasion to charge you, Wretch, I never had had this dishonor, if thou hadst never been called a christian; thou art a christian to no purpose, or to very bad; it does thee no good, and it injures me? But (which is more directly considerable as to our present purpose) the neglect and consequent decay of any gracious principle, infers a languor, a consump

*This kind of philosophy is divided into the science and the habit of the mind, &c. Vide page 132.

tion and enfeeblement of all. Any such perverse disposition doth not affect that part only, is not only an impairment to the contrary gracious principle, but (as a cancer in some exterior part of the body) it gradually creeps up till it invade the vitals. Can the love of God live and grow in an unquiet, angry, uncharitable breast? Consider, Jam. 1. 26. 1 John 3. 17. [2.] Be constantly intent upon this business of spiritual growth. Mind it as a design, make a solemn purposed business of it, your great daily business. You do not till your ground by chance, as a casual thing; but you do it industriously, and of set purpose. The apostle speaking of his own method of pursuing conformity to Christ, (Phil. 3. 8.) tells us, he did in comparison, count all things else loss and dog's meat; he threw every thing else aside. Then next he recounts with himself, how far short he was; Not as if I had already attained, &c. (ver. 12.) (where by the way he intimates, that to stand still, and give over further endeavors, implies that gross absurdity, as if we thought ourselves to have attained already, to be already perfect; are we not ashamed to seem so conceited of ourselves? and then still as he did attain in his pursuit he forgot what was behind; (ver. 12. 13.) and held on his course with fresh and constant vigor, still reaching forth and pressing onward towards his designed mark.

In this great business we alas! seem to dream. He that hath been observed ten or twenty years ago to be proud, and covetous, or passionate, still remains so, and we apprehend not the incongruity of it. What, always learning, and yet never come to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus, to the putting off the old man, and putting on the new? Who would meddle with any profession upon such terms, to be always doing and yet to do nothing? Surely it must be imputed to this, we design not, we do not seriously intend the perfecting of holiness, to make a real progress in our way and work, and to get still nearer heaven, as we draw nearer to the end of our days on earth. We too contentedly confine ourselves within certain limits and aim not, as we should at a spiritual excellency. This is the temper of many that have long trodden the path of (at least an external) religion; they will go but their own pace, and that within a self-prescibed round or circle. They perform their stated task of religious exercises, and shun the grosser vices of the time; and resolve never to go higher: much like the character that was once given of a great man, (Tiberius,) Neque enim eminentes virtutes sectabatur, et rursum vitia oderat: that he followed not the more eminent virtues, and yet that he hated vice. Tacit. Annal. And it is a true censure that a barbarian, (Thespesion, Philostro. in vit. Apollon. Tyan.) is said to have given of that middle temper, that dull indifferency: Πᾶν γὰρ ὅ τιμῆς τε, καὶ τιμωρίας ἴσον ἀφέσηxev, ¿πw ȧgérn: what is equally distant from being the matter