it is vicious. For happiness is a relative thing, and doth in its own nature imply a correspondence and agreement between the faculty and the object; and be the object never so good in itself, yet if it doth not agree with the faculty whereunto it is objected, it is misery and affliction to it. Though a man should be entertained with all the delicate relishes of music, yet if he hath not a musical ear, it will be but a tedious ungrateful din to him; and though his appetite should be courted with all the rich varieties in nature, yet if they do not agree with his coarse and homely palate, he will distaste and nauseate them. And so if a man should be placed in heaven among all the joys with which that blessed state abounds, yet unless his mind and temper did suit and agree with them, they would all be so many miseries and torments to him; he would be afflicted even in Abraham's bosom, and grope for heaven in the midst of paradise; and it would be impossible for him to be pleased with his condition, till the genius and temper of his mind were altered, and the dispositions of his soul were reconciled to that heavenly state. So that if we can demonstrate that there is and must be antipathy and disagreement in wicked souls to the future happiness, it will then be apparent, from the nature and reason of the thing, that our enjoyment of the future happiness depends upon our ceasing to be wicked, or, which is all one, upon our mortifying the deeds of the flesh. Now to evidence this disagreement between wicked souls and the heavenly state, I shall do these three things:

First, Shew wherein the felicities of the future state do consist.

Secondly, What the temper and disposition of wicked souls will be in the future state.

Thirdly, How contrary such a temper and disposition must be unto such felicities.

1. I am to shew wherein the felicities of the future state do consist. And here I shall not presume to give you a particular description of heaven, the felicities whereof the apostle tells us are ineffable; but shall content myself to give you the general account of it, which I find in the revelation of the gospel. In general therefore we may be secure of this, that heaven is such an happiness as is most suitable to a rational nature; it being designed and prepared for reasonable beings, to whom (as I have shewed) it would not be a heaven, if it were not agreeable to their natures. For should God have provided for us a heaven of sensual felicities, to gratify the unbounded lickerishness of our carnal appetites, it would have been a happiness fitter for beasts than men and whilst our sensual and brutish part had been feasted with everlasting varieties of carnal pleasures, our intellectual powers, which are the noblest ingredients of our natures, must have pined away a long eternity, for want of those joys and delights which alone are proper and agreeable to their natures. Now our proper happiness, as we are reasonable beings, consists in being perfectly rational, and in the union of our understandings, wills, and affections with such objects as are most agreeable to our rational natures. And what is it to be perfectly rational, but to reason truly according to the nature of things; and to choose and refuse, and love and hate, according to the dictates of true reason? And what is it to have our understandings, wills, and af

fections united to such objects as are most agreeable to our reasonable natures, but only to know that which is most worthy to be known, and to choose and love that which is most worthy to be chosen and loved? When therefore our understanding is become so clear and vigorous as to reason aright, and penetrate into the natures of things, and our wills and affections are perfectly compliant and harmonious with it, and all these are in conjunction with God, the fountain of all truth and goodness, we are then arrived to the heavenly state of reasonable natures. And therefore all that is positively affirmed of the heavenly happiness in the gospel is only this; that it consists in our seeing God, and loving and resembling him, and being for ever associated with those blessed spirits that see and love and resemble him as well as we. And this doubtless is such a felicity as no mortal language can express: for how will my understanding triumph, when it is once emerged out of all the mists and clouds, with which it is here surrounded, into the clear heaven of vision, where it shall have a free and uninterrupted prospect throughout the whole horizon of truth; when God and heaven, and all the mysteries of the other world, shall be always present to my ravished thoughts! How hale and sound, how light and expedite will my soul be, when it is disentangled from all those unreasonable passions which here do clog and disease her! When all her jarring faculties shall be reduced into a perfect harmony, what a heaven of content and peace will there spring up within her own bosom! And when she is thus contempered to the divine perfection, and inspired throughout with a godlike nature, in what raptures of love and

ecstasies of joy will she converse with God and blessed spirits! This doubtless, if there were no more, is enough to make the heavenly state unspeakably happy and blessed: and this, together with perfect freedom from pains and misery and death, is all of heaven that God hath made known to us in his gospel. Here we are told that we shall be made perfect; that we shall see as we are seen, and know as we are known, and behold him that is invisible face to face for yet it doth not appear what we shall be, says St. John; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is, 1 Epist. iii. 2. There may be, and doubtless are, sundry additional felicities to these; but in these it is apparent the main of heaven doth consist, because these are all that God hath plainly revealed and made known to us.

2. The next thing proposed was to shew what the temper and disposition of wicked souls will be in the future state. And this may be easily gathered by considering wherein a wicked temper consists: for doubtless with the same temper of mind that we are of in this world, we shall go into the other: for merely by going into the other world men cannot be altered as to their main state, though they may be perfected as to those good dispositions that were here begun : so that he that is wicked here will be wicked there too, and that same disposition of mind that we carry with us to our graves we shall retain with us in eternity. If therefore we would know what the temper of a wicked soul will be in the future state, our best way will be to inquire what it is that we call a wicked temper here, because it will be the same here and hereafter. Now a wicked temper

consists of two things; first, of sensuality, and secondly, of devilishness. By sensuality, I mean an immoderate propension of the soul to the pleasures of the body; such an headstrong propension as wholly diverts the soul from all her nobler delights to the brutish pleasures of intemperance, and wantonness, and gluttony; together with those other lusts that are subservient to them, such as fraud, and covetousness, and ambition, and the like. By devilishness, I mean those spiritual wickednesses which do not so much depend upon the body as the former, but are more immediately centred in the soul; such as pride and malice, and wrath and envy, and hatred and revenge, &c. which are the sins of the devil, by which those once glorious and blessed spirits were transformed into fiends and furies. These are the venomous ingredients of which a wicked temper is composed. If you inquire therefore what the temper of a wicked soul will be in the future state, I answer, it will be the same there that it is here; that is, it will be sensual and devilish. As for the latter, there can be no doubt of it; for devilishness being immediately subjected in the soul, cannot be supposed to be separated from her by her separation from the body, and may as well abide in naked and separated spirits, as it doth in the apostate angels. And as for sensuality, though it cannot be supposed that a soul should retain the appetites of the body after it is separated from it, yet having wholly abandoned itself to corporeal pleasures while it was in the body, it may, and doubtless will, retain a vehement hankering after a reunion with it, which is the only sensuality that a separated soul is capable of. For when she comes into the world of spirits, her former accustom