light, it will but serve to make your impurity both more visible and more inexcusable. If you mean that the Holy Ghost should dwell with you, entertain Him, avoiding both spiritual and fleshy pollutions. The word here used, doth more particularly signify chastity; and certainly, wherever this wisdom from above is, this comely grace is one of her attendants. Whatever any have been in times past, let all be persuaded henceforth to mortify all lustful and carnal affections. Know that there is more true and lasting pleasure in the contempt of unlawful pleasures, than in the enjoyment of them. Grieve not, then, the good Spirit of God with actions or speeches, yea, or with thoughts, that are impure. The unholy soul, like the mystical Babylon, makes itself a cage of unclean birds, and a habitation of filthy spirits; and if it continues to be such, it must, when it dislodges, take up its habitation with cursed spirits for ever in utter darkness. But as for those that are sincerely and affectionately pure, that is, pure in heart, our Saviour hath pronounced their begun happiness-Blessed are they that are pure in heart, and assured them of full happiness-for they shall see God. This wisdom is sent from Heaven on purpose to guide the elect thither by the way of purity. And mark how well their reward is suited to their labour: their frequent contemplating and beholding of God's purity as they could, while they were on their journey, and their labouring to be like Him, shall bring them to sit down in glory, and to be for ever the pure beholders of that purest object. They shall see God. What this is, we cannot tell you, nor can you conceive it; but walk heavenwards in purity, and long to be there, where you shall know what it means: For you shall see Him as He is.

Now to that blessed Trinity be praise for ever!

SERMON II.

PREFACE.

I will return to my place, saith the Lord by His Prophet, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face. In their affliction they will seek me early. Hos. v. 15. The Father of Mercies hides Himself from His children, not to lose them, but that they may seek Him, and may learn, having found Him, to keep closer by Him than formerly. He threatens them, to keep them from punishment: if His threatening work submission, it is well; if not, He punishes them gently, to save them from destruction. He seeks no more

but that they acknowledge their offence, and seek His face. Wonderful clemency! For who can forbear to confess multitudes of offences, who know themselves? And who can choose but seek Thy face, who ever saw Thy face, and who know Thee? In their affliction, they will seek me early. He that prays not till affliction comes and forces him to it, is very slothful; but he that prays not in affliction, is altogether senseless. Certainly, they that at this time are not more than ordinarily fervent in prayer, or do not at least desire and strive to be so, cannot well think that there is any spiritual life within them. Surely, it is high time to stir up ourselves to prayers and tears. All may bear arms in that kind of service. women may be strong in prayer; and those tears wherein they usually abound upon other occasions, cannot be so well spent as this way. Let them not run out in howlings and impatience, but bring them, by bewailing sins, private as well as public, to quench this public fire. And ye men, yea, ye men of courage, account it no disparagement thus to weep. We read often of David's tears, which were no stain to his valour. That cloud which hangs over us, which the frequent vapours of our sins have made, except it dissolve and fall down again in these sweet showers of godly tears, is certainly reserved to be the

Weak

matter of a dreadful storm. Be instant, every one, in secret, for the averting of this wrath, and let us now again unite the cries of our hearts for this purpose to our compassionate God, in the name and mediation of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

JOB XXXIV. 31, 32.

Surely it is meet to be said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more.

That which I see not, teach Thou me: if I have done iniquity, I will do no

more.

THE great sin, as well as the great misery of man, is, the forgetting of God; and the great end and use of His works and of His word, is, to teach us the right remembrance and consideration of Him in all estates. These words do particularly instruct us in the application of our thoughts towards Him in the time of affliction. The shortness and the various signification of the words used in the original, give occasion to some other readings and another sense of them. But this we have in our Translation, being not only very profitable, but very congruous, both to the words of the primitive text, and to the contexture of the discourse, I shall keep to it, without dividing your thoughts by the mentioning of any other. Neither will I lead you so far about, as to speak of the great dispute of this book, and the question about it which is held. He that speaks here, though the youngest of the company, yet, as a wise and calm-spirited man, closes all with a discourse of excellent temper, and full of grave useful instructions, amongst which this is one.

Surely it is meet to be said (or spoken) to God.] This speaking to God, though it may be vocal, yet, it is not necessarily nor chiefly so, but is always mainly, and may often be only, mental: without this, the words of the mouth, how well chosen and well expressed soever they be, are to God of no account or signification at all. But if the heart speak, even when there is not a word in the mouth, it is that He hearkens

to, and regards that speech, though made by a voice that none hears but He, and in a language that none understands but He.

But it is a rare, unfrequent thing, this communing of the heart with God, speaking its thoughts to Him concerning itself, and concerning Him, and His dealings with it, and the purposes and intentions it hath towards Him; which is the speech here recommended, and is that Divine exercise of meditation and soliloquy of the soul with itself and with God, hearkening what the Lord God speaks to us within us, and our hearts echoing and resounding his words, (as Psalm xxvii. 8, 9.) and opening to Him our thoughts of them and of ourselves. Though they stand open, and He sees them all, even when we tell Him not of them, yet, because He loves us, He loves to hear them of our own speaking: Let me hear thy voice, for it is sweet; as a father delights in the little stammering, lisping language of his beloved child. And if the reflex affection of children be in us, we shall love also to speak with our Father, and to tell Him all our mind, and to be often with Him in the entertainments of our secret thoughts.

But the most of men are little within: either they wear out their hours in vain discourse with others, or possibly vainer discourses with themselves. Even those who are not of the worst sort, and who, possibly, have their times of secret prayer, yet do not so delight to think of God and to speak with Him, as they do to be conversant in other affairs, and companies, and discourses, in which there is a great deal of froth and emptiness. Men think, by talking of many things, to be refreshed, and yet, when they have done, find that it is nothing, and that they had much better have been alone, or have said nothing. Our thoughts and speeches in most things, run to waste, yea, are defiled; as water spilt on the ground, is both lost, cannot be gathered up again, and is polluted, mingled with dust. But no word spoken to God, from the serious sense of a holy heart, is lost: He receives it, and returns it into our bosom with advantage. A soul that delights to speak to Him, will find that He also delights to speak to it. And this communication

certainly, is the sweetest and happiest choice; to speak little with men, and much with God. One short word, such as this here, spoken to God in a darted thought, eases the heart more when it is afflicted, than the largest discourses and complainings to the greatest and powerfullest of men, or the kindest and most friendly. It gives not only ease, but joy, to say to God, I have sinned, yet, I am Thine; or, as here, I have borne chastisement, I will no more offend. The time of affliction is peculiarly a time of speaking to God, and such speech as this is peculiarly befitting such a time. And this is one great recommendation of affliction, that it is a time of wiser and more sober thoughts; a time of the returning of the mind inwards and upwards. A high place, fulness and pleasure, draw the mind more outwards. Great light and white colours dissipate the sight of the eye, and the very thoughts of the mind too ; and men find that the night is a fitter season for deep thoughts. It is better, says Solomon, to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. Those blacks made the mind more serious. It is a rare thing to find much retirement unto God, much humility and brokenness of spirit, true purity and spirituality of heart, in the affluence and great prosperities of the world. It is no easy thing, to carry a very full cup even, and to digest well the fatness of a great estate and great place. They are not to be envied who have them: even though they be of the better sort of men, it is a thousand to one but they shall be losers by the gains and advancements of this world, suffering proportionably great abatements of their best advantages, by their prosperity. The generality of men, while they are at ease, do securely neglect God, and little mind either to speak to Him, or to hear Him speak to them. God complains thus of His own people: I spoke to them in their prosperity, and they would not hear. The noises of coach-wheels, of their pleasures and of their great affairs, so fill their ears, that the still voice wherein God is, cannot be heard. I will bring her into the wilderness, and there I will speak to her heart, says God of His Church. There the heart is more at quiet to