vouchsafe a participation of himself, and his own likeness, into my soul.'* Happiness is nothing but the releasing and unfettering of our souls from all narrow, scant, and particular good things; and the espousing of them to the highest and most universal good, which is not this or that particular good, but goodness itself: and this is the same thing, which we call holiness. With which, because we ourselves are so little acquainted, for the most part ever courting its mere shadow, therefore, we have such low, abject, and beggarly conceits of it; whereas, it is, in itself, the most noble, heroical, and generous thing, in the world. For I mean by holiness, nothing else but God stamped and printed on the soul. And we may please ourselves with what conceits we will; but, so long as we are void of this, we do but dream of heaven, and I know not what fond paradise; we do but blow up and down, an airy bubble of our own fancies, which rises out of the froth of our vain hearts; we do but court a painted heaven, and woo happiness in a picture, whilst, in the mean time, a true and real hell will absorb our souls into it, and will soon make us sensible of solid woe, and substantial misery.

Divine wisdom has so ordered the frame of the whole universe, that every thing should have a certain proper place, a fit receptacle for it. Hell is the sink of all sin and wickedness. The strong magic of nature pulls and draws every thing, continually, to that place which is suitable to it, and to which it belongs. So, all heavy bodies press downwards, to

* Deus ipse, cum omni sua bonitate, quatenus extra me est, non facit me beatum, sed quatenus in me est,'

wards the centre of our earth, drawn in by its attraction. In like manner, hell, wheresoever it is, will, by strong sympathy, pull in all sin, and magnetically draw it to itself. While true holiness is always breathing upwards, and fluttering towards heaven, striving to embosom itself with God: and it will, at last, undoubtedly be conjoined with him; no dismal shades of darkness can possibly stop it in its course, or bear it back.* Nay, we do but de

Hell is nothing but

ceive ourselves with names. the orb of sin and wickedness, that hemisphere of darkness, in which all evil moves; and heaven is the opposite hemisphere of light, the bright orb of truth, holiness, and goodness. And, in this life, we actually instate ourselves in the possession of one or other of them. Take sin and disobedience out of hell, and it will presently clear up into light, tranquillity, serenity, and shine out into a heaven. Every true saint carries his heaven about with him, in his own heart; and hell, that is without, can have no power over him. He might safely wade through hell itself, and, like the three children, pass through the midst of that fiery furnace, and yet not at all be scorched with its flames. He might walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and yet fear no evil.

Sin is the only thing in the world, that is contrary to God. God is light, and that is darkness. God is beauty, and that is ugliness and deformity. All sin is direct rebellion against God; and, with what notions soever we sugar it, and sweeten it, yet God

Ως αιει το όμοιον αγει Θεός εις το όμοιον.

can never smile upon it, he will never make a truce with it. God declares open war against sin, and bids defiance to it; for it is a professed enemy to God's own life and being. God, who is infinite goodness, cannot but hate sin, which is purely evil. Sin is, in itself, but a poor, impotent, and crazy thing; nothing but straitness, poverty, and nonentity; so that, of itself, it is the most wretched and miserable thing in the world, and needs no farther punishment besides itself. Divine vengeance beats it off, still further and further from God; and, wheresoever it is, will be sure to scourge it and lash it continually. God and sin can never agree together.

That I may, therefore, yet come nearer to ourselves. This is the message, which I have now to declare unto you, that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all: if we say, that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." Christ and the Gospel are light, and in them there is no darkness at all. If you say, that you know Christ and his Gospel, and yet keep not Christ's commandments, but dearly hug your private darling corruptions, you are liars, and the truth is not in you; you have no acquaintance with the God of light nor the Gospel of light. If any of you say, that you know Christ, and have an interest in him, and yet, as I fear too many do, still nourish ambition, pride, vain-glory, within your breasts; harbour malice, revengefulness, and cruel hatred to your neighbours, in your hearts; eagerly scramble after sordid pelf, and make the strength of your parts and endeavours serve that blind mammon, the

EE

god of this world; if you wallow and tumble in the filthy puddle of fleshly pleasures, or if, in your lives, you aim only at selfish ends, and make interest the compass by which you sail, and the star by which you steer your course, looking at nothing higher or more noble than yourselves, — if these things be so, then deceive not yourselves; you have neither seen Christ, nor know him; you are deeply incorporated, if I may so speak, with the spirit of this world; and have no true sympathy with God and Christ, no fellowship at all with the Father and the Son.

And, I beseech you, let us consider: are there not many of us, who pretend much to Christ, that are plainly, in our lives, as proud, ambitious, vain-glorious, as any others? Are there not many of us, as much under the power of unruly passions, as cruel, revengeful, malicious, censorious as others? Many, that have our minds as deeply engaged in the world, and as much envassalled to riches, gain, profit, those great admired deities of the sons of men, and their souls as much overwhelmed and sunk, with the cares of this life? Do not many of us, as much give ourselves to the pleasures of the flesh, and, though not without regrets of conscience, yet, every now and then, secretly soak ourselves in them? Are there not many of us, who have as deep a share, likewise, in injustice and oppression, in vexing the fatherless and the widows? I wish it may not prove some of our cases, at that last day, to use such pleas as these unto Christ in our behalf:

Lord, I have prophesied in thy name; I have preached many a zealous sermon for thee; I have

kept many a long fast; I have been very active for thy cause in church, in state; nay I never made any question, but that my name was written in thy book of life:' - when yet, alas! we shall receive no other return from Christ but this: "I know you

not; depart from me, ye workers of iniquity." I am sure, there are too many of us, who have long pretended to Christ, and yet, make little or no progress in true Christianity, that is, in holiness of life; men who ever hang hovering, in a twilight of grace; who never seriously put ourselves forward into clear day-light, but esteem that glimmering crepusculum which we are in, and like that faint twilight, better than broad, open, meridian splendour: whereas, "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." I am sure there are many of us, who are perpetual dwarfs, in our spiritual stature; like those silly women, laden with sins, and led away by strange desires, who are ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" who are not now one jot taller in Christianity, than we were many years ago; but have still as sickly, crazy, and unsound a temper of soul, as we had long before.

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Indeed, we seem to do something: we are always moving and lifting at the stone of corruption, which lies upon our hearts, but yet we never stir it, or at least never roll if off from us. We are sometimes a little troubled with the guilt of our sins, and then, we think we must thrust our desires out of our hearts; but afterwards, we sprinkle ourselves