all fears and despairs: he is in a bright, clear region, above clouds and tempests-infra se despicit nubes. There is no frightful terribleness in the supreme Majesty. That we apprehend God at any time in such a dismayed manner, must not at all be made an argument of His nature, but of our sinfulness and weakness. The sun in the heavens always was, and always will be, a globe of light and brightness, howsoever a purblind eye is rather dazzled than enlightened by it. There is an inward sense in man's soul, which, were it once awakened and excited with an inward taste and relish of the Divinity, could better define God to him than all the world else. It is the sincere Christian that so tastes and sees how good and sweet the Lord is, as none else does: 'The God of hope fills him with all joy and peace in believing,' so that he 'abounds in hope',' as the apostle speaks. He quietly reposes himself in God; 'his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord';' he is more for a solid peace, and settled calm of spirit, than for high raptures and feelings of joy, or extraordinary manifestations of God to him; he does not passionately desire, nor importunately expect such things; he rather looks after the manifestations of the goodness and power of God within him, in subduing all in his soul that is unlike and contrary to God, and forming him into His image and likeness. Though I think it worthy of a Christian to endeavour after the assurance of his own salvation; yet, perhaps, it might be the safest way to moderate his curiosity of prying into God's book of life, and to stay a while until he sees himself within the confines of salvation itself. Should a man hear a voice from heaven, or see a vision from the Almighty, to testify unto him the love of God. towards him; yet, methinks, it were more desirable to find a revelation of all from within, arising up from the bottom and centre of a man's own soul, in the real and internal impressions of a godlike nature upon his own spirit; and thus to find the foundation and beginning of heaven and happiness within himself: it were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own will, the mortifying of the mere animal life, and to see a Divine life rising up in the room of it, as a sure pledge and inchoation of immortality and happiness, the very essence of which consists in a perfect conformity, and cheerful compliance of all the powers of our souls, with the will of God. The best way of gaining a well-grounded assurance of the Divine love is this-for a man to overcome himself and his own will: 'To him that overcometh shall be given that white stone, and in it the new name written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it.' He that beholds the Sun of Righteousness arising in the horizon of his soul with healing in its wings, and chasing away all that misty darkness of his own self-will and passions; such a one desires not now the star-light to know whether it be day or not, nor cares he to pry into heaven's secrets, and to search into the hidden rolls of eternity, there to see the whole plot of his salvation; for he views it transacted upon the inward stage of his own soul, and, reflecting upon himself, he may behold a heaven opened from within, and a throne set up in his soul, and an Almighty Saviour sitting upon it, and reigning within him: he now finds the kingdom of heaven within him, and sees that it is not a thing merely reserved for him without him, being already made partaker of the sweetness and efficacy of it. What the Jews say of the Spirit of Prophecy, may not unfitly be applied to the Holy Ghost, the true Comforter, dwelling in the minds of good men, as a sure earnest of their eternal inheritance; 'The Spirit resides not but upon a man of fortitude2'—one that gives proof 1 Revel. ii. 17. .8 .Vid. Discourse on Prophecy, cap אין הנבואה שורה אלא על גבור: 2 of this fortitude in subduing his own self-will and his affections. We read of Elisha, that he was fain to call for a musical instrument, and one to play before him, to allay the heat of his passions, before he could converse with the prophetical spirit. The Holy Spirit is too pure and gentle a thing to dwell in a mind muddied and disturbed by those impure dregs, those thick fogs and mists that arise from our self-will and passions: our prevailing over these is the best way to cherish the Holy Spirit, by which we may be sealed unto the day of redemption. To conclude this particular. It is a venturous and rugged guess and conceit which some men have, that in a perfect resignation of our wills to the Divine will, a man should be content with his own damnation, and to be the subject of eternal wrath in hell, if it should so please God: which is as impossible as it is for him that infinitely thirsts after a true participation of the Divine nature, and most earnestly endeavours after a most inward union with God in spirit, by a denial of himself and his own will, to swell up in self-love, pride, and arrogancy against God; the one whereof is the most substantial heaven, the other the most real hell; whereas, indeed, by conquering ourselves, we are translated from death to life, and the kingdom of God and Heaven is already come into us. CHAPTER VIII. The sixth property or effect discovering the excellency of religion, viz. That it spiritualizes material things, and carries up the souls of good men from sensible and earthly things, to things intellectual and divine. There are lesser and fuller representations of God in the creatures. To converse with God in the creation, and to pass out of the sensible world into the intellectual, is most effectually taught by religion. Wicked men converse not with God, as shining out in the creatures; they converse with them in a sensual and unspiritual manner. Religion does spiritualize the creation to good men: it teaches them to look at any perfections or excellencies in themselves and others, not so much as theirs or others, but as so many beams flowing from one and the same fountain of light; to love them all in God, and God in all the uni versal goodness in a particular being. A good man enjoys and delights in whatsoever good he sees otherwhere, as if it were his own: he does not fondly love and esteem either himself or others. temper and strain of the ancient philosophy. 6. THE The divine HE sixth property or effect, wherein religion discovers its own excellency, is this, That it spiritualizes material things, and so carries up the souls of good men from earthly things to things divine, from this sensible world to the intellectual. God made the universe and all the creatures contained therein, as so many glasses wherein He might reflect His own glory: He hath copied forth Himself in the creation; and, in this outward world, we may read the lovely characters of the Divine goodness, power, and wisdom. In some creatures, there are darker representations of God; there are the prints and footsteps of God; but in others, there are clearer and fuller representations of the Divinity, the face and image of God; according to that known saying of the schoolmen, Remotiores similitu dines creaturæ ad Deum dicuntur vestigium; propinquiores vero imago. But how to find God here, and feelingly to converse with Him, and, being affected with the sense of the Divine glory shining out upon the creation, how to pass out of the sensible world into the intellectual, is not so effectually taught by that philosophy which professed it most, as by true religion: that which knits and unites God and the soul together, can best teach it how to ascend and descend upon those golden links that unite, as it were, the world to God. That Divine wisdom that contrived and beautified this glorious structure, can best explain her own art, and carry up the soul back again, in these reflected beams, to Him who is the fountain of them. Though good men, all of them, are not acquainted with all those philosophical notions touching the relation between created and the uncreated being; yet may they easily find every creature pointing out to that Being, whose image and superscription it bears, and climb up from those darker resemblances of the Divine wisdom and goodness, shining out in different degrees upon several creatures, woreр ávaßálpois тioí, as the ancients speak', till they sweetly repose themselves in the bosom of the Divinity: and, while they are thus conversing with this lower world, and are viewing 'the invisible things of God in the things that are made,' in this visible and outward creation they find God, many times, secretly flowing into their souls, and leading them silently out of the court of the temple into the holy place. But it is otherwise with wicked men. They dwell perpetually upon the dark side of the creatures, and converse with these things only in a gross, sensual, earthly, and unspiritual manner: they are so encompassed with the thick and foggy mist of their cwn corruptions, that they cannot see God there, where He is most visible: the light shineth in darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not3:' their souls are so deeply 1 Διδάσκουσι μὲν οὖν ἀναλογίαι τε καὶ ἀφαιρέσεις, καὶ γνώσεις τῶν ἐξ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ávaßaoμol Twes.-Plot. Enn. VI. 7, 36. 2 Rom. i. 20. |