Christians found the mortification of the fleshly lusts a great advantage to the soul's delight in God.

4. And many errors about God's nature and works much hinder us from feasting on his love.

5. And especially the slight and ignorant thoughts of Christ, and the wondrous workings of God's love in him.

6. And especially if our belief itself once shake, or be not well and firmly founded.

7. And our slight thoughts of the office and work of the Holy Ghost on souls, and our necessity of it, and our not begging and waiting for the Spirit's special help.

8. And lastly, our unfaithful forgetfulness of manifold experiences and testimonies of his love, which should still be as fresh before us.

Alas! my soul, thou feelest thy defect, and knowest the hindrance, but what hope is there of remedy? Will God ever raise so low, so dull, so guilty a heart, to such a foretaste of glory, as is this effusion of his love by the Holy Ghost? The lightsome days in spring and summer, when the sun reviveth the late naked earth, and clothes it with delectable beauties, differs not more from night and winter, than a soul thus revived with the love of God doth differ from an unbelieving, formal soul.

Though this great change be above my power, the Spirit of God is not impotent, backward, barren, or inexorable. He hath appointed us means for so high a state; and he appointeth no means in vain. Were my own heart obedient to my commands, all these following I would lay upon it; yea, I will do it, and beg the help of God.

1. I charge thee, think not of God's goodness and love, as unproportionable to his greatness and his knowledge; nor overlook, in the whole frame of heaven and earth, the manifestation of one any more than of the other.

2. Therefore, let not the wickedness and misery of the world tempt thee to think basely of all God's mercies to the world; nor the peculiar privileges of the churches draw thee to deny or contemn God's common mercies unto all.

3. I charge thee to make the study of Christ, and the great work of man's redemption by him, thy chiefest learning, and most serious and constant work; and in that wonderful glass to see the face of divine love, and to hear what is said of it by the Son from heaven; and to come boldly, as reconciled to God by him.

4. O, see that thy repentance for former sins against knowledge, and conscience, and the motions of God's Spirit, be sound, and thoroughly lamented and abhorred, how small soever the matter

was in itself; that so the doubt of thy sincerity keep not up doubts of God's acceptance.

5. Let thy dependence on the Holy Ghost, as given from Christ, be henceforth as serious and constant to thee as is the dependence of the eye on the light of the sun, and of natural life upon its heat and motion. Beg hard for the Holy Spirit, and gladly entertain it.

6. O, never forget the many and great experiences thou hast had, these almost sixty years observed, of marvelous favor and providence of God, for soul and body, in every time, place, condition, relation, company, or change, thou hast been in! Lose not all these love-tokens of thy Father, while thou art begging

more.

7. Hearken not too much to pained flesh, and look not too much into the grave; but look out at thy prison windows to the Jerusalem above, and the heavenly society that triumph in glory.

8. Let all thy sure notices of a future life, and of the communion we have here with those above, draw thee to think that the great number of holy souls that are gone before thee must needs be better than they were here; and that they had the same mind, and heart, and way; the same Savior, Sanctifier, and promise, that thou hast; and therefore they are as pledges of felicity to thee. Thou hast joyfully lived with many of them here; and is it not better to be with them there? It is only the state of glory foreseen by faith, which most fully showeth us the greatness of God's love.

9. Exercise thyself in psalms of praise, and daily magnify the love of God, that the due mention of it may warm and raise thy love to him.

10. Receive all temptations against divine love with hatred and repulse, especially temptations to unbelief; and as thou wouldest abhor a temptation to murder, or perjury, or any other heinous sin, as much abhor all temptations that would hide God's goodness, or represent him to thee as an enemy, or unlovely.

Thus God hath set the glass before us, in which we may see his amiable face. But alas! souls in flesh are in great obscurity, and, conscious of their weakness, are still distrustful of themselves, and doubt of all their apprehensions, till overpowering objects and influences satisfy and fix them. For this my soul, with daily longing, doth seek to thee, my God and Father: O, pardon the sin that forfeits grace: I am ready to say, 'Draw nearer to me;' but it is meeter to say, 'Open thou my eyes and heart, and remove all impediments, and undisposedness, that I may believe and feel how near thou art, and hast been to me, while I perceived it not.'

XIII. It is God's love shed abroad on the heart by the Holy Ghost, which must make us "rejoice in hope of the glory of God: " this will do it, and without this it will not be done.

This would turn the fears of death into joyful hopes of future life. If my God will thus warm my heart with his love, it will have these following effects in this matter:

1. Love longeth for union, or nearness, and fruition; and it would make my soul long after God in glorious presence.

2. This would make it much easier to me to believe that there is certainly a future blessed life for souls; while I even tasted how God loveth them. It is no hard thing to believe that the sun will give light and heat, and revive the frozen earth; nor that a father will show kindness to his son, or give him an inheritance. Why should it be hard to believe that God will glorify the souls whom he loveth, and that he will take them near himself; and that thus it shall be done to those whom he delights to honor?

3. This effusion of divine love would answer my doubts of the pardon of sin: I should not find it hard to believe that love itself, which hath given us a Savior, will forgive a soul that truly repenteth, and hates his sin, and giveth up himself to Christ for justification. It is hard to believe that a tyrant will forgive, but not that a father will pardon a returning prodigal son.

4. This effusion of divine love will answer my fears, which arise from mere weakness of grace and duty; indeed it will give no other comfort to an unconverted soul, but that he may be accepted if he come to God by Christ, with true faith and repentance; and that this is possible. But it should be easy to believe, that a tender father will not kill nor cast out a child for weakness, crying or uncleanness divine love will accept and cherish even weak faith, weak prayer, and weak obedience and patience, which are sin

cere.

:

5. This effused love would confute temptations that are drawn from thy afflictions, and make thee believe that they are not so bad as flesh representeth them: it would understand that every son that God loveth he chasteneth, that he may not be condemned with the world, and that he may be partaker of his holiness, and the end may be the quiet fruit of righteousness: it would teach us to believe that God in very faithfulness doth afflict us; and that it is a good sign that the God of Love intendeth a better life for his beloved, when he trieth them with so many tribulations bere; and though Lazarus be not saved for his suffering, it signified that God, who loved him, had a life of comfort for him, when he had his evil things on earth. When pangs are greatest, the birth is nearest.

6. Were love thus shed on the heart by the Holy Ghost, it would give me a livelier apprehension of the state of blessedness which all the faithful now enjoy: I should delightfully think of them as living in the joyful love of God, and ever fully replenished therewith. It pleaseth us to see the earth flourish in the spring, and to see how pleasantly the lambs, and other young things will skip and play; much more to see societies of holy Christians loving each other and provoking one another to delight in God. O, then, what a pleasant thought should it be, to think how all our deceased godly friends, and all that have so died since the creation, are now together in a world of divine, perfect love! How they are all continually wrapped up in the love of God, and live in the delight of perfect love to one another!

O my soul, when thou art with them, thou wilt dwell in love, and feast on love, and rest in love; for thou wilt more fully dwell in God, and God in thee; and thou wilt dwell with none but perfect lovers: they would not silence thee from praising God in their assembly tyrants, malignants, and persecutors, are more strange there (or far from thence) than toads, and snakes, and crocodiles are from the bed or bedchamber of the king. Love is the air, the region, the world, they live in: love is their nature, their pulse, their breath, their constitution, their complexion, and their work: it is their life, and even themselves and all. Full loath would one of those spirits be to dwell again among blind Sodomites, and mad, self-damning malignants upon earth.

7. Yea, this effused love will teach us to gather the glory of the blessed from the common mercies of this life: doth God give his distracted, malignant enemies, health, wealth, plenty, pleasure, yea, lordships, dominions, crowns, and kingdoms; and hath he not much better for beloved, holy souls!

Yea, doth he give the brutes life, sense, delight, and beauty; and hath he not better things for men; for saints?

There are some so blind as to think that man shall have no better, hereafter, because brutes have not, but perish. But they know not how erroneously they think. The sensible souls of brutes are substance, and therefore are not annihilated at death; but God put them under us, and made them for us, and us more nearly for himself. Brutes have not faculties to know and love God, to meditate on him, or praise him, or, by moral agency, to obey his precepts: they desire not any higher felicity than they have: God will have us use their service, yea, their lives and flesh, to tell us they were made for us. He tells us not what he doth with them after death; but whatever it is, it is not annihilation, and it is like they are in a state still of service unto man:

whether united, or how individuate, we know not; nor yet whether those philosophers are in the right, that think that this earth is but a small image of the vast superior regions, where there are kingdoms answerable to these here, where the spirits of brutes are in the like subjection, in aërial bodies, to those low, rational spirits that inhabit the aerial regions, as in flesh they were to man in flesh. But it is enough for us that God hath given us faculties to know, love, praise, and obey him, and trust him for glory, which he never gave to them, because they were not made for things so high. Every creature's faculties are suited to their use and ends.

And love tells me, that the blessed God, who giveth to brutes that life, health, and pleasure, which they are made and fitted for, will give his servants that heavenly delight in the fullness of his love and praise, and mutual, joyful love to one another, which nature fundamentally, and grace more immediately, hath made them fit for.

Blessed Jehovah! for what tastes of this effused love thou hast given me, my soul doth bless thee, with some degree of gratitude and joy; and for those further measures which I want and long for, and which my pained, languid state much needs, and which would raise my joyful hopes of glory, I wait, I beg, from day to day. O, give me now, at the door of heaven, some fuller taste of the heavenly felicity shed more abroad upon my heart, by the Holy Ghost, that love of thine, which will draw up my longing soul to thee, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.