follow God; and, again, Λόγῳ δὲ ὀρθῷ πείθεσθαι καὶ θεῷ, TAUTÓV ÉσTI1. But by self-denial I mean, the soul's quitταυτόν ἐστι. ting all its own interest in itself, and an entire resignation of itself to Him, as to all points of service and duty: and thus the soul loves itself in God, and lives in the possession, not so much of its own being, as of the Divinity; desiring only to be great in God, to glory in His light, and spread itself in His fulness; to be filled always by Him, and to empty itself again into Him; to receive all from Him, and to expend all for Him; and so to live, not as its own, but as God's. The highest ambition of a good man is to serve the will of God: he takes no pleasure in himself, nor in any thing within himself, further than he sees a stamp of God upon it. Whereas wicked men are imprisoned within the narrow circumference of their own beings, and perpetually frozen into a cold self-love, which binds up all the innate vigour of their souls, that it cannot break forth or express itself in any noble way. The soul in which religion rules, says, as St Paul did, 'I live; and yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.' On the contrary, a wicked man swells in his own thoughts, and pleaseth himself more or less with the imagination of a self-sufficiency. The Stoics, seeing they could not raise themselves up to God, endeavoured to bring down God to their own model, imagining the Deity to be nothing else but some greater kind of animal, and a wise man to be almost one of his peers. And this is more or less the genius of wicked men; they will be something in themselves, they wrap up themselves in their own being, move up and down in a sphere of self-love, live a professed independency of God,

1 Hierocl. in Aur. Carm. p. 128. (Needham.) Similarly we read (Ibid. p. 90.) Ταύτας τῆς κρίσεως ἀρχὰς κυριωτάτας ἀποδεχόμεθα, τὴν ἀγαθότητα τοῦ θεοῦ, τὸν ἀπὸ ταύτης νόμον, τὸν ἐν ἡμῖν παρανομούμενον ὀρθὸν λόγον, καὶ, ὥσπερ τινὰ ἔνοικον

θεὸν, πλημμελούμενον.

2 Gal. ii. 20.

3 Sapiens cum Diis ex pari vivit, Deorum socius, non supplex. Sen. in Ep. 52 et 31.

and maintain a meum et tuum between God and themselves. It is the character only of a good man to be able to deny and disown himself, and to make a full surrender of himself unto God; forgetting himself, and minding nothing but the will of his Creator; triumphing in nothing more than in his own nothingness, and in the allness of the Divinity. But indeed this, his being nothing, is the only way to be all things; this, his having nothing, the truest way of possessing all things.

2. As a good man lives above himself in a way of self-denial, so he lives also above himself as he lives in the enjoyment of God: and this is the very soul and essence of true religion, to unite the soul in the nearest intimacy and conjunction with God, who is nyn (wñs, πηyǹ voû, píça чvxns, as Plotinus speaks'. Then, indeed, the soul lives most nobly, when it feels itself to 'live, and move, and have its being in God2;' which though the law of nature makes the common condition of all created being, yet is it only true religion that can give us a more feeling and comfortable sense of it. God is not present to wicked men, when His Almighty essence supports them and maintains them in being; 'but He is present to him that can touch Him,' hath an inward feeling knowledge of God, and is intimately united to Him; but to him that cannot thus touch Him He is not present3.'

Religion is life and spirit, which, flowing out from God, who is that AvTown that hath life in Himself, returns to Him again as into its own original, carrying the souls of good men up with it. The spirit of religion. is always ascending upwards, and, spreading itself through the whole essence of the soul, loosens it from a self

1 Ἐν δὲ ταύτῃ τῇ χορείᾳ καθορᾷ πηγὴν μὲν ζωῆς, πηγὴν δὲ νοῦ, ἀρχὴν ὄντος, ἀγα θοῦ αἰτίαν, ῥίζαν ψυχῆς. Plot. Enn. VI, 9, 9.

2 Acts xvii. 28.

3 ἀλλ ̓ ἔστι τῷ δυναμένῳ θίγειν παρὸν, τῷ δὲ ἀδυνατοῦντι οὐ πάρεστι. Plot. En.

VI. 9, 7.

D D

confinement and narrowness, and so renders it more capacious of divine enjoyment. God envies not His people any good; but, being infinitely bountiful, is pleased to impart Himself to them in this life, so far as they are capable of His communications: they stay not for all their happiness till they come to heaven. Religion always carries its reward along with it, and when it acts most vigorously upon the mind and spirit of man, it then, most of all, fills it with an inward sense of Divine sweetness. To conclude. To walk with God, is, in Scripture, made the character of a good man, and it is the highest perfection and privilege of created nature to converse with the Divinity. Whereas, on the contrary, wicked men converse with nothing but their lusts and the vanities of this fading life, which here flatter them, for a while, with unhallowed delights, and a mere shadow of contentment; and when these are gone, they find both substance and shadow to be lost eternally. But true goodness brings in a constant revenue of solid and substantial satisfaction to the spirit of a good man, delighting always to sit by those eternal springs that feed and maintain it: the spirit of a good man, as it is well expressed by the philosopher, ἀκινήτως ἐνίδρυται ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ τῆς θείας ἀγαθότητος, and is always drinking in fountaingoodness, and fills itself more and more, till it is filled with all the fulness of God'.

1 Τὰ δὲ ἄλλα πάντα, ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ τοῦ ἑνὸς καὶ τῶν πολλῶν ἀγαθοτήτων παραχθέντα, ἀποστάντα τοῦ εἶναι αὐτοαγαθὰ

καὶ ἀκινήτως ἐνιδρῦσθαι ἐν τῇ ὑπάρξει τῆς θείας ἀγαθότητος, κατὰ μέθεξιν ἔχει τὸ ȧyalbv. Simpl. in Epictet. cap. I. § I.

CHAPTER III.

3. The nobleness of religion in regard of its properties, &c. of which this is one, viz. Religion enlarges all the faculties of the soul, and begets a true ingenuousness, liberty, and amplitude, the most free and generous spirit in the minds of good men. The nearer any being comes to God, the more large and free; the further it slides from God, the more straitened. Sin is the sinking of man's soul from God into sensual selfishness. An account when the most generous freedom of the soul is to be taken in its just proportions. How mechanical and formal Christians make an art of religion, set it such bounds as may not exceed the scant measure of their principles; and then fit their own notions as so many examples to it. A good man finds not his religion without him, but as a living principle within him. God's immutable and eternal goodness the unchangeable rule of His will. Peevish, self-willed, and imperious men shape out such notions of God as are agreeable to this pattern of themselves. The truly religious have better apprehensions of God.

HA

AVING discoursed of the nobleness of religion in its original and nature, we come now to consider the excellency of religion in its properties, its proper effects, and vital operations. In treating of this third particular we shall, as we have formerly done, without tying ourselves precisely to any strict rules of art and method, confound the notions of religion in abstracto and in concreto together, handling them promiscuously. As religion is a noble thing, 1. In respect of its original, 2. In respect of its nature; so also 3. In respect of its properties and effects.

1. The first property and effect of true religion whereby it expresseth its own nobleness is this; That it widens and enlarges all the faculties of the soul, and begets a true ingenuousness, liberty, and amplitude, the most free and generous spirit, in the minds of good men. Those in whom religion rules, are there is a true generous spirit within them, which shows the nobleness of their

extraction. The Jews have a good maxim to this purpose: 'None truly noble, but he that applies himself to religion, and a faithful observance of the divine law'.' Cicero could see so much in his natural philosophy as made him say, Scientia naturæ ampliat animum, et ad divina attollit. But this is most true of religion, that, in a higher sense, it does work the soul into a true and divine amplitude. There is a living soul of religion in good men which, spreading itself through all their faculties, spirits all the wheels of motion, and enables them to dilate and extend themselves more fully upon God and all divine things, without being pinched or straitened within themselves. Whereas wicked men are of most narrow and confined spirits; they are so contracted by the pinching particularities of earthly and created things, so imprisoned in a dark dungeon of sensuality and selfishness, so straitened through their carnal designs and ends, that they cannot stretch themselves, nor look beyond the horizon of time and sense.

The nearer any being comes to God, who is that infinite fulness that fills all in all, the more vast, and large, and unbounded it is; as the further it slides from Him, the more it is straitened and confined; as Plato hath long since concluded concerning the condition of sensual men, that they live 'like a shellfish','-and can never move up and down but in their own prison, which they ever carry about with them. Were I to define sin, I would call it, The sinking of a man's soul from God into a sensual selfishness. All the freedom that wicked men have, is but like that of banished men-to wander up and down in the wilderness of this world from one den and cave to another.

The more high and noble any being is, the deeper ra

.2 $ .Massec. A roth. cap. vi אין לך בן חורין אלא מי שעוסק בתלמוד תורה : 1

2 оσтρÉον трÓжоv, Plat. Phædr. 250 0.