from him who is thy life and art laying a train for the blowing up of thy eternal Hope All that hate him love death Further 3. It is the most comprehensive wickedness and which entirely contains all other in it For as the Law of Love is the universal and summary Law comprehending all Duty and even as it enjoins love to God for love to men ought to be resolved into that and must be for his sake so must disaffection to God be comprehensive of all sin whereinto every thing of it resolves it self Dost thou not see then how thou cancellest and nullifiest the obligation of all Laws while thou hast no delight in God offerest violence to the very knot and juncture wherein they all meet and are infolded together Not to delight in God therefore What can it be but the very top of Rebellion What will thy sobriety thy justice thy charity signifie if thou hadst these to glory in while thou art habitually disaffected to thy God Let men value thee for these to whom thereby thou shewest some respect But shall he who in the mean time knows thou bearest none to him 4. It is a most reproachful contemptuous wickedness To him I mean whom it most directly offends against Carries it not in it most horrid contumely and indignity to the most high God It is a practical denial of all those excellencies in him that render and recommend him the most worthy object of our delight it is more than saying He is not good holy wise just and true Things may on the sudden be said that are not deliberately thought and may be retracted the next breath but a man 's stated constant course and way signifies the apprehension it proceeds from to be fixed and that it is the setled habitual sense of his Soul Yea and since as hath been said Thou delightest in other things whilst thou delightest not in him It plainly imports it to be the constant sense of thy very heart that those things are better than He. What is it then that hath thy delight and love Whereon is thy heart set Commune with thy self Dost thou not tremble when thou findest this to be thy very case that thou may'st truly say I can delight in creatures but not in God can take pleasure in my friend but none in him I must confess it to be the temper of my heart that I love my Father Mother Son or Daughter more than Christ Is it not then to be concluded from his own express word that thou art not worthy of him and canst be none of his Disciple Nay may'st thou not moreover truly say that thou lovest this base impure earth more than God That thou takest more delight in thy companions in wickedness canst more solace thy self with a drunkard on the Ale-bench with a lascivious wanton with a prophane scoffer at godliness than with the blessed God That thou canst allow thy self to riot with the luxurious and eat and drink with the drunken and not only do such things but take pleasure in them that do them yea and thy self take pleasure to commit iniquity but in the glorious holy God thou canst take no pleasure Then wouldst thou be content to carry the plain sense of thy heart written on thy forehead and proclaim it to all the world as thy resolved practical judgment That thou accountest thy Friends thy Relations this vile and vanishing World thy wicked Associates thine own impure lusts better than God And dost thou not yet see the horrid vileness of thy own heart in all this Art thou yet an harmless innocent creature an honest well-meaning man for all this Yea wil't thou not see that thine heart goes against thy Conscience all this while That thou disaffectest him in whom thou knowest thou shouldst delight That the temper of thy Spirit is a continual affront to thy profession through the perfidious falshood and vanity whereof thou dost but cover hatred with lying lips Is not that an odious thing which thou so seekest to hide and which though thou art not loath to be guilty of it thou art so very unwilling should be known And since thou art so very loath it should be known How canst thou hold up thy head before that eye that is as a flame of fire that searches thy heart and tries thy reins that observes thy wayward spirit and sees with how obstinate an aversion thou declinest his acquaintance and converse Wilt thou stand before the glorious Majesty of Heaven and Earth who knows thy disaffected heart and say it is but a small transgression thou hast been guilty of in not loving him and making him thy delight Dost thou think this will pass for a little offence in the solemn judgment of the great day that is drawing on Or will thy heart indure or thy hands be strong when the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open thou shalt stand convicted before his Tribunal in the sight of Angels and Men of having born all thy days a false disloyal heart full of malignity and ill-will to thy Soveraign Lord whom thou wast so many ways obliged to serve and cleave to with delight and love When the difference shall be visibly put between those that delighted in God and them that never did and thou shalt be markt out for one of them that didst in heart depart from him all thy days and be thereupon abandon'd to the society of that horrid accursed crew in whom only thou didst delight Surely thou wilt not then say thy transgression was small 2. But we are also to expostulate with another sort who though they are not altogether unacquainted with this heavenly exercise of delighting in God yet too much disuse it and apply not themselves to it as who do with that constancy and intention of Soul as the matter requires And these we are to put upon the consideration of such evils as either are included in this neglect or are ally'd unto it and do therefore accompany and aggravate the natural evil of it as either causing it or being caused by it And 1. Those whom we now intend are to bethink themselves what evil is included in their neglect of this part of holy Practice And you are to judg of the evil of it by its disagreement with such known and usual measures as whereto our practice should be sutable and which in reason and justice it is to be estimated and censured by as for instance The Divine Law Conscience Experience Obligation by kindness Stipulation Relation Profession Tendency of the new Nature Dictates of Gods Spirit The course and drift of his design with all which it will be found to have very ill accord 1. How directly opposite is it to the Law of God! Not only to his express written Precept but to that immutable eternal Law which arises from our very Natures refer'd unto his The obligingness or binding force whereof doth not so much stand in this That the thing to
heavens he hath done whatsoever he pleased Their Idols are silver and gold c. Be thou exalted O God in thine own strength We will sing and praise thy power Forsake me not until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation and thy power to every one that is to come c. This is given out as the Song of Moses and the Lamb Who shall not fear thee O Lord and glorifie thy name Great and marvelous are thy works Lord God Almighty c. And how do they magnifie his Mercy and Goodness both towards his own people and his creatures in general O how great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee that thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the children of men Rejoice in the Lord O ye righteous for praise is comely for the upright Praise the Lord with harp Sing unto him with the Psaltery The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. I will extol thee my God O King I will bless thy name for ever and ever Men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts they shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness and shall sing of thy righteousness The Lord is gracious and full of compassion slow to anger and of great mercy The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works To insert all that might be mentioned to this purpose were to transcribe a great part of the Bible And in what raptures do we often find them in the contemplation of his Faithfulness and Truth his Justice and Righteousness his Eternity the boundlesness of his Presence the greatness of his Works the extensiveness of his Dominion the perpetuity of his Kingdom the exactness of his Government Who is a strong God like unto thee and to thy faithfulness round about thee Thy mercy O Lord is in the heavens and thy faithfulness reaches unto the clouds Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth or the world from everlasting to everlasting thou art God But will God indeed dwell on the earth Behold the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee The works of the Lord are great sought out of them that have pleasure therein His work is honourable and glorious c. All thy works shall praise thee O Lord and thy Saints shall bless thee they shall speak of the glory of thy Kingdom and talk of thy power To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts and the glorious Majesty of his Kingdom Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom and thy Dominion endureth throughout all generations And his Glory in the general which results from his several Excellencies in conjunction How loftily is it often celebrated with the expression of the most loyal desires that it may be every-where renowned and of greatest complacency in as far as it is apprehended so to be The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever They shall sing in the ways of the Lord for great is the glory of the Lord. Be thou exalted above the heavens let thy glory be above all the earth Let them praise the name of the Lord for his name alone is excellent his glory is above the earth and the heavens When you read such passages as these whether they be elogies or commendations of him or doxologies and direct attributions of glory to him you are to bethink your selves with what temper of heart these things were uttered with how raised and exalted a spirit what high delight and pleasure was conceived in glorifying God or in beholding him glorious How large and unbounded a heart and how full of his praise doth still every where discover it self in such strains When all Nations when all Creatures when every-thing that hath breath when Heaven and Earth are invited together to join in the consort and bear a part in his praises And now eye him under the same notions under which you have seen him so magnified that in the same way you may have your own heart wrought up to the same pitch and temper towards him Should it not provoke an emulation and make you covet to be amidst the throng of loyal and devoted Souls when you see them ascending as if they were all incense When you behold them dissolving and melting away in delight and love and ready to expire even fainting that they can do no more designing their very last breath shall go forth in the close of a Song I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live I will sing praise to my God while I have my being How becoming is it to resolve This shall be my aim and ambition to fly the same and if it were possible a greater height Read over such Psalms as are more especially designed for the magnifying of God and when you see what were the things that were most taking to so spiritual and pious hearts thence receive instruction and aim to have your hearts alike affected and transported with the same things Frame the supposition that you are meant that the invitation is directed to you O Come let us sing unto the Lord let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise to him with Psalms for the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods c. And think with your selves Is he not as great as he was Is he not as much our Maker as he was theirs Is it not now as true that the Lord reigneth and is high above all the earth and exalted far above all gods Now since these were the considerations upon which so great complacency was taken in him set the same before your own eyes And since these were proposed as the matter of so common a joy and the Creation seems design'd for a musical instrument of as many strings as there are Creatures in Heaven and Earth Awake and make haste to get your heart fixed Lest the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad the world and all that dwell therein Lest the sea roar and the fulness thereof the floods clap their hands the fields and the hills be joyful together and all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord while you only are silent and unconcern'd And seriously consider the kind and nature of that joy and delight in God wherewith the hearts of holy men did so exceedingly abound Which is to be collected from the expressed ground and reasons of it for the most part wheresoever you have any discovery of that joy it self This general and principal character may be given of it that it was a sincerely-devout and a loyal joy not a mean narrow selfish pleasure an hugging of themselves in this apprehension meerly It is well with me or I am safe and happy whatsoever becomes of the world This was still the burden of their Song The Lord is
method in which they were brought to the capacity of doing so For ye are dead Their professed relation to Christ did suppose them risen and did therefore first suppose them dead Now if they would do sutably to what their profession imported this was it they had to do To abstract their minds and hearts from the things of this earth and place them upon the things of an higher region And as it s afterwards expressed in this same context which we were considering before to have our conversation or Citizenship in heaven whence we look for the Saviour c. That is as our chief interests and priviledges are above to have our thoughts and the powers of our Souls chiefly exercised upon that blessed and glorious state which state is the prize mentioned above of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus It being the scope and import of his Call unto us and the very design of his sufferings on the Cross to draw up a people from earth to heaven whence therefore they that under this Call do still mind earthly things are said to be enemies to the Cross of Christ the great incongruity whereof the Apostle even resents with tears as he there testifies And it was in this that he was for his part so willing to comply with the design of the Cross that he made no difficulty to endure all the hardship and dolour of it that he might attain this glorious fruit and gain which he reckoned should accrew to him from it even more of a rais'd heavenly mind which signify'd it to be strongly bent that way already when no mortifications were reckoned too severe to be undergone in order thereto And here therefore this soul-rectifying influence must be understood to have been proportionably strong Hence also it was that we find him groaning as one under a pressure or heavy weight to be cloath'd upon with the heavenly house and to have mortality swallowed up of life Because God had wrought him to this self-same thing so bent and determined his spirit was towards the blessedness of the future state which seems the most natural contexture of discourse here though some others have understood it otherwise as that though he could bear patiently the delay he could not but desire most earnestly to be there And we see how the temper of the Primitive Christians was as to this and the other world in those days when the Spirit was plentifully poured out They took joyfully the spoiling of their goods knowing in themselves they had in Heaven a far better and an enduring substance Heaven signified much with them and this world very little They looked not to the things that were seen and temporal but to the things unseen and eternal As those former Worthies did whose minds and hearts being set right by that faith which is the substance of the things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen They lived as pilgrims and strangers on earth despised the pleasures riches and honours of it Endured all manner of hardships and tortures in it not accepting deliverance because they were taken up in the pursuit of the better Country had respect to the recompence of reward and expected a part in the better Resurrection And is it not a delightful thing to the spirit of a man when he is sensibly disintangled and at liberty from the cares desires griefs and fears that were wont to enwrap his heart when he finds his weights and clogs faln off that deprest him the bonds and snares loosed which bound him down to this earth and feels himself ascending and moving upwards out of that darkness stupidity and death that possessed his Soul into that upper region of light purity and peace unto which his spirit is still gradually more and more connaturallized day by day When Heaven in respect of the pure holiness the calm serenity the rest and blessedness of it is now grown familiar to him and his very element We see then that in all these mentioned respects this gracious communication wherein it is rectifying and tends to settle the Soul in that frame which it ought to be in and which is most proper and natural to it therein it is also most delightful and carries highest matter of pleasure in it It is upon the whole that we may sum up the account of this divine communication in the following characters of it 1. Generative and begets the Soul to a new a divine life makes it of a sluggish stupid dead thing as it was towards all heavenly and divine matters living and sprightly full of active life and vigour Life we say is sweet it is in it self a pleasant thing This mean bodily life it self is so if we do but consider it and allow our selves to taste and enjoy the pleasure of it As for instance that this and that limb and member is not a dead lump that we feel life freshly sprouting and springing in every part is not this delightsom How much more the life of the Soul especially this so excellent and sublime kind of life And it is the radical principle of all other consequent pleasure that by which we are capable thereof every thing is sapless and without savour to the dead How pleasant operations and fruitions doth the divine life render a person capable of 2. It is Nutritive Souls are nourished by the same thing by which they are begotten by the same divine influence As a generative vertue is wont to be attributed to the Sun so it cherishes also its own productions The beams of that Sun of righteousness make them that fear God grow up as calves in the stall fill them with marrow and fatness cause them to flourish as the Cedars of Lebanon And is not that delightsome to be increased daily with the increases of God fed with heavenly hidden Manna Angels food and thereby though we need not here speak distinctly of these to receive at once both nourishment and growth 3. It is Sanative and virtually contains all the fruits in it which are for the healing of the Nations when the Soul grows distemper'd it restores it and is both sustaining and remedying to it How great is the pleasure of health and soundness of ease to broken bones of relief to a sick and fainting heart so it is often for in the present state the cure is not perfect and relapses are frequent with the Soul in which the life of God hath begun to settle and diffuse it self till his influence repair and renew it And when it doth so how pleasant is it to find an heart made sound in his statutes and to perceive a-new working in it the Spirit of love power and a sound mind So pleasant that it occasions a triumph even when the outward man is perishing if it be found that the inward is renewed day by day 4. It is Corroborative and strengthening confirms resolutions and establishes the heart Hereby they
needless unwarrantable modesty as to account you are of a lower rank than all that ever became intimately acquainted with the hidden delights of a godly life At least you are as capable of being thought worthy as any for his sake upon whose account all must be accepted Therefore think with your selves Why should I not labour to attain as far in the matter of Religion as this or that Neighbour of mine What should hinder Who restrains or forbids me But you cannot if you consider but have somewhat more to assure you of the delightfulness of it than the meer report of others For your own Reason and Conscience cannot but so pronounce if you go to the particulars that have been instanc't in If you acknowledg a God and consider your self as a reasonable Creature made by him and depending on him you cannot but see it is congruous and fit your spirit should be so framed and affected towards Him towards your fellow-creatures of your own order and all things else that do and shall circumstantiate your present and future state as hath been in some measure though very defectively represented And that it must needs be very pleasant if it were so You can frame in your mind an Idea of a life transacted according to such rectified inclinations And when you have done so do but solemnly appeal to your own judgment whether that were not a very delectable life And thereupon bethink your self what your case is if you cannot actually relish a pleasure in what your own judgment tells you is so highly pleasurable Methinks you should reflect thus What a monstrous creature am I that confess that delightful wherein yet I can take no delight How perverse a nature have I Surely things are much out of order with me I am not what I should be And one would think it should be uneasie to you to be as you are and that your spirit should be restless till you find your temper rectified and that you are in this respect become what you should be And will you dream and slumber all your days How much time have you lost that might have been pleasantly spent in a course of godliness Do you not aim at a life of eternal delights with God If you now begin not to live to God when will you That life which you reckon shall never end with you must yet have a beginning Will you defer till you dye your beginning to live Have you any hope God will deal in a peculiar way with you from all men and make the other world the place of your first heart-change How dismal should it be to you to look in and still find your heart dead towards God and the things of God so that you have no delight in them Think what the beginnings of the Divine life and the present delights of it must be the earnest of to you and make sure the ground betime of so great an hope BUT I forbear here to insist further and pass on to the Discourse of Delighting in God under the other more strict notion of it viz. As the very act of delight hath its direct exercise upon himself So we are to consider this delight not as a thing some way adherent to all other duties of Religion but as a distinct Duty of it self that requires a solemn and direct application of our selves thereunto For though it seems little to be doubted but there is in this Precept a part of Religion put for the whole as having a real influence and conferring with its name a grateful savour and tincture upon the whole it would yet be very unreasonable not to take special notice of that part from whence the intire frame of Religion hath its name And having shewn the nature of this Duty already in the former part what is now to be said must more directly concern the practice of it And will as the case requires fall into two kinds of Discourse viz. Expostulation concerning the omission and disuse of such Practice And Invitation thereunto And in both these kinds it is requisite we apply our selves to two sorts of Persons viz. Such whose spirits are wholly averse and alien to it And Such as though not altogether unpractis'd are very defective in it and neglect it too much 1. Both sorts are to be expostulated with and no doubt the great God hath a just quarrel with mankind whom these two sorts do comprehend upon the one or the other of these accounts wherein it is fit we should plead with men for his sake and their own And 1. With the former sort Them who are altogether disaffected to God alienated and enemies in their minds through wicked works and excepting such as deny his being with whom we shall not here concern our selves at the utmost distance from delighting in him And as to such our Expostulation should aim at their conviction both of The matter of fact That thus the case is with them And of The great iniquity and evil of it First It is needful we endeavour to fasten upon such a conviction That this is the state of their case For while his being is not flatly deny'd men think it generally creditable to be professed Lovers of God and reckon it so odious a thing not to be so that they who are even most deeply guilty are not easily brought to confess enmity to him but flatter themselves in their own eyes till their iniquity be found to be hateful The difficulty of making such apprehend themselves diseased that their minds are under the power of this dreadful distemper that it is not well with spirits in this respect is the great obstruction to their cure But I suppose you to whom I now apply my self to acknowledg the Bible to be Gods Word and that you profess reverence to the Truth and Authority of that Word and will yeild to be tried by it 1. Therefore first you must be supposed such as believe the account true which that book gives of the common state of man That it is a state of Apostacy from God That the Lord looking down from heaven upon the children of men to see if any did understand and seek God finds they are all gone aside i. e. that the return may answer to the meaning of the inquiry gone off from him Every one of them is gone back or revolted as it is expressed in the parallel Psalm There is none that doth good no not one which is quoted by the Apostle to the intent That every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may become guilty before God This is then a common case And as the same Apostle charges it upon the Gentiles that they were haters of God so doth our Saviour as expresly on the Jews who no doubt thought themselves as innocent of this crime as you That they had both seen and hated both Him and his Father And when it is said of men that they were by nature the