Secondly, Consider, that this change is in its own nature, and the design of God who works it, dispositive of the soul for blessedness.' Tis sufficiently evident from the consideration of the state itself of the unrenewed soul, that a change is necessary for this end; such a soul in which it is not wrought, when once its drowsy, stupifying slumber is shaken off, and its reflecting power awakened, must needs be a perpetual torment to itself. So far it is removed from blessedness, it is its own hell, and can fly from misery and death no faster than from itself. Blessedness composes the soul, reduces it to a consistency; it infers, or rather is, a self-satisfaction, a well-pleasedness and contentment with one's self, enriched and filled with the Divine fulness. Hence 'tis at rest, not as being pent in, but contentedly dwelling with itself, and keeping within its own bounds of its own accord. The unrenewed soul can no more contain itself within its own terms or limits, is as little selfconsistent, as a raging flame, or an impetuous tempest. Indeed its own lusts perpetually, as so many vultures, rend and tear it; and the more when they want external objects: then as hunger, their fury is all turned inward; and they prey upon intestines, upon their own subject; but unto endless torment, not satisfaction. In what posture is this soul for rest and blessedness? The nature of this change sufficiently speaks its own design. 'Tis an introduction of the primordia, the very principles, of blessedness. And Scripture as plainly speaks the design of God: He regenerates to the undefiled inheritance; makes meet for it; works, forms, or fashions the soul unto that self-same thing, viz. to desire and groan after that blessed state; and consequently to acquiesce and rest therein. Therefore, vain man, that dreamest of being happy without undergoing such a change; how art thou trying thy skill to abstract a thing from itself! for the pre-required righteousness whereunto thou must be changed, and this blessedness, are in kind and nature the same thing, as much as a child and a man. Thou pretendest thou wouldst have that perfected which thou canst not endure should ever be begun; thou settest thyself to prevent and suppress what, in its own nature, and by divine ordination, tends to the accomplishment of thy own pretended desires. Thou wouldst have the tree without ever admitting the seed or plant: thou wouldst have heat, and canst not endure the least warmth: so besotted a thing is a carnal heart!

have largely shown the righteousness is, in which it terminates. The sum of that discovery is, that God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, the proper import of it, therefore, is the actual reconciliation of the soul to God through Christ; a friendly well-affected posture of spirit towards God, our last end and highest good; and towards Christ, our only way, since the apostacy, of attaining and enjoying it. To rest therefore in any other good dispositions or endowments of mind, is as much besides the business, as impertinent to the present purpose, as if one designed to the government of a city, should satisfy himself that he hath the skill to play well on a lute, or he that intends physic, that he is well seen in architecture. The general scope and tenour of the gospel tells thee, O man, plainly enough, what the business is thou must intend (if thou wilfully overlook it not) in order to thy blessedness 'Tis written to draw thee intot fellowship with the Father and the Son, that thy joy may be full. It aims at the bringing of thee into a state of blessedness in God through Christ; and is therefore the instrument by which God would form thy heart thereto; the seal by which to make the first impression of his image upon thee, which will then as steadily incline and determine thy soul towards him, as the magnetic touch ascertains the posture of the needle. Wherefore doth he there discover his own heart, but to melt, and win, and transform thine? The word of grace is the seed of the new creature. Through the exceeding great and precious promises, he makes souls partake of the Divine nature. Grace is, firstly, revealed to teach the denial of ungodliness, &c. Turn thy thoughts hither then, and consider what is there done upon thy soul by the gospel to attemper and conform it to God? Wherein has thy heart answered this its visible design and intendment? Thou art but in a delirious dream till thou seriously bethinkest thyself of this. For otherwise how can the aversion of thy heart from him escape thy daily observation? Thou canst not be without evidences of it. What pleasure dost thou take in retiring thyself with God; what care to redeem time only for converse with him? hadst thou not rather be any where else? In a time of vacancy from business and company, when thou hast so great a variety of things before thee, among which to choose an object for thy thoughts, do they not naturally fall upon any thing rather than God? Nor do thou think to shift off this by assigning the mere natural cause; for if there were not somewhat more in the matter, why is it not so with all? He upon whom this change had passed could say," My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips, when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night-watches. My meditation of him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord. How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with thee. Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O God, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night, yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early, &c. Therefore plain it is, there is a sinful distemper to be wrought out, an ungodly disposition of heart, which it concerns thee not to rest till thou see removed.

Fourthly, Consider, that to become godly, or this change of inclinations and dispositions towards God, is that which of all other the soul doth most strongly reluctate and strive against; and which therefore it undergoes with greatest difficulty and regret. 'Tis a horrid and amazing thing it should be so, but Scripture and experience leave it undoubted that so it is. What! that the highest excellency, the most perfect beauty, loveliness, and love itself, should so little attract a reasonable, spiritual being that

than monstrous unnaturalness is this, so to disaffect one's own original! "Twere easy to accumulate and heap up considerations that would render this astonishingly strange. So things are reckoned upon several accounts, either as they are more rare and unfrequent, (which is the vulgar

way of estimating wonders,) or as their causes are of more difficult investigation; or (if they are moral wonders) as they are more unreasonable or causeless. Upon this last account, Christ marvelled at the Jews' unbelief; and so is this hatred justly marvellous; as being baltogether without a cause. But thence to infer there is no such thing, were to dispute against the sun. No truth hath more of light and evidence in it, though none more of terror and prodigy. To how many thousand objects is the mind of man indifferent; can turn itself to this or that; run with facility all points of the compass, among the whole universe of beings: but assay only to draw it to God, and it recoils; thoughts and affections revolt, and decline all converse with that blessed object! Towards other objects it freely opens and dilates itself, as under the benign beams of a warm sun: there are placid, complacential emotions; amicable, sprightly converses and embraces. Towards God only it is presently contracted and shut up; life retires, and it becomes as a stone, cold, rigid, and impenetrable: the quite contrary to what is required, (which also those very precepts do vainly imply,) 'tis alive to sin, to the world, to vanity; but crucified, mortified, dead to God and Jesus Christ.

The natures of many men that are harsh, fierce, and savage, admit of many cultivations and refinings; and by moral precept, the exercise and improvement of reason, with a severe animadversion and observance of themselves, they become mild, tractable, gentle, meek. The story of the physiognomist's guess at the temper of Socrates is known. But of all other, the disaffected soul is least inclinable ever to become good-natured towards God, wherein grace or holiness doth consist. Here 'tis most unpersuadable, never facile to this change. One would have thought no affection should have been so natural, so deeply inwrought into the spirit of man, as an affection towards the Father of spirits; but here he most of all discovers himself to be without natural affection: surely here is a sad proof, that such affection doth not ascend. The whole duty of man, as to the principle of it, resolves into love. That is the fulfilling of the law. As to its object; the two tables divide it between God and our neighbour; and accordingly divide that love. Upon those two branches whereof, love to God, and love to our neighbour, hang all the law and the prophets. The wickedness of the world hath killed this love at the very root, and indisposed the nature of man to all exercises of it, either way, whether towards God or his neighbour. It hath not only rendered man unmeet for holy communion with God, but in a great measure for civil society with one another. It hath destroyed good nature: made men false, envious, barbarous; turned the world, especially the dark places of the earth, where the light of the gospel shines not, into habitations of cruelty. But who sees not the enmity and disaffection of men's hearts towards God, is the more deeply rooted and less superable evil?

The beloved apostle gives us a plain and sad intimation how the case is, as to this, when he reasons thus; He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? He argues from the less to the greater; and this is the ground upon which his argument is built, that the loving of God is a matter of greater difficulty, and from which the spirit of man is more remote, than loving of his neighbour. And he withal insinuates an account why it is so, God's remoteness from our sense, which is indeed a cause, but no excuse: it is a peccant, faulty cause. For is our so gross sensuality no sin? that nothing should affect our hearts, but what we can see with our eyes? as if our sense were the only measure or judge of excellencies. We are not all flesh; what have we done with our souls? If we cannot see God with our eyes, why do we not with our minds? at least so much of him we might, as to discern his excellency above all things else. How come our souls to lose their dominion, and to be so slavishly subject to a ruling sense? But the reason less concerns our present purpose; that whereof it is the reason, that implied assertion, that men are in a less disposition to the love of God than their neighbours,

is the sad truth we are now considering. There are certain homiletical virtues that much adorn and polish the nature of man, urbanity, fidelity, justice, patience of injuries, compassion towards the miserable, &c. and indeed without these, the world would break up, and all civil societies disband; if at least they did not in some degree obtain. But in the mean time men are at the greatest distance imaginable from any disposition to society with God. They have some love for one another, but none for him. And yet it must be remembered, that love to our neighbour, and all the consequent exertions of it, becoming duty by the divine law, ought to be performed as acts of obedience to God, and therefore ought to grow from the stock and root of a divine love; I mean, love to God. They are otherwise but spurious virtues, bastard fruits, (men gather not grapes of thorns, &c.) they grow from a tree of another kind; and whatever semblance they may have of the true, they want their constituent form, their life and soul. Though & love to the brethren is made a character of the regenerate state, of having passed from death to life; 'tis yet but a more remote, and is itself brought to trial by this higher and more immediate one, and which is more intimately connatural to the new creature, even the love of God; By this we know we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. A respect to God specifies every virtue and duty. Whatever is loved and served, and not in him and for him, (servato ordine finis, as the school phrase is,) becomes an idol; and that love and service is idolatry. And what a discovery is here of disaffection to God; that in the exercise of such (the abovementioned) virtues, one single act shall be torn from itself, from its specifying moral form, only to leave out him. A promise shall be kept, but without any respect to God, for even the promises made to him are broken without any scruple. That which is another's shall be rendered to him; but God shall not be regarded in the business. An alms given, for the Lord's sake left out. That which concerns my neighbour often done, but what concerns God therein, as it were, studiously omitted. This is what he that runs may read, that though the hearts of men are not to one another as they should, they are much more averse towards God.

The

Men are easier of acquaintance towards one another, they slide insensibly into each other's bosoms; even the most churlish, morose natures, are wrought upon by assiduous repeated kindnesses, (gutta carat lapidem,) &c. as often-falling drops at length wear and work into very stones; towards God their hearts are more impenetrable than rocks, harder than adamants. He is seeking with some an acquaintance all their days: they live their whole age under the gospel, and yet are never won. They hearken to one another, but are utterly unpersuadable towards God; as the deaf adder that hears not the voice of the charmer, though charming never so wisely. clearest reason, the most powerful arguments, move them not; no nor the most insinuative allurements, the sweetest breathings of love: "How often would I have gathered thee, as the hen her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." God draws with the cords of a man, with the bands of love; but they still perversely keep at an unkind distance. Men use to believe one another, (were there no credit given to each other's words, and some mutual confidence in one another, there could be no human converse, all must affect solitude, and dwell in dens and deserts as wild beasts,) but how incredulous are they of all divine revelations, though testified with never so convincing evidence! Who hath believed our report! The word of the eternal God is regarded (O amazing wickedness) as we would the word of a child or a fool; no sober, rational man, but his narrations, promises, or threatenings, are more reckoned of. Men are more reconcilable to one another when enemies, more constant when friends. How often doth the power of a conquering enemy, and the distress of the conquered, work a submission on this part, and a remission on that. How often are haughty spirits stooped by a series of calamities, and made ductile; proud arrogants formed, by necessity and misery, into humble supplicants, so as to lie prostrate

f Proinde virtutes quas sibi videtur habere, nisi ad Deum retulerit, etiam iosa vitia sunt potius quam virtutes. Aug. de Civit. Dei, 1. 19, c. 25.

g Matt. xxii 37. See Psal. lxxxi. 8-13. Prov. i. 20-24, &c. Hos. xi. 4.

Yea, when there seems at least to have been a reconciliation wrought, are treacheries, covenant breakings, revolts, strangeness, so frequent among men towards one another, as from them towards God? How inconsistent with friendship is it, according to common estimate, to be always promising, never performing; upon any or no occasion to break off intercourses, by unkind alienations or mutual hostilities; to be morose, reserved each to other; to decline or disaffect each other's converse; to shut out one another from their hearts and thoughts. But how common and unregretted are these carriages towards the blessed God! It were easy to expatiate on this argument, and multiply instances of this greater disaffection. But in a word, what observing person may not see, what serious person would not grieve to see, the barbarous sooner putting on civility; the riotous, sobriety; the treacherous, fidelity; the morose, urbanity; the injurious, equity; the churlish and covetous, benignity and charity; than the ungodly man, piety and sincere devotedness unto God? Here is the principal wound and distemper sin hath infected the nature of man with: though he have suffered a universal impairment, he is chiefly prejudiced in regard of his habitude and tendency towards God, and what concerns the duties of the first table. Here the breach is greatest, and here is the greatest need of repair. True it is, an inoffensive, winning deportment towards men, is not without its excellency, and necessity too. And it doth indeed unsufferably reproach Christianity, and unbecome a disciple of Christ; yea, it discovers a man not to be led by his Spirit, and so to be none of his; to indulge himself in immoral deportments towards men; to be undutiful towards superiors; unconversable towards equals; oppressive towards inferiors; unjust towards any. Yet is a holy disposition of heart towards God most earnestly and in the first place to be endeavoured, (which will then draw on the rest,) as having in it highest equity and excellency, and being of the most immediate necessity to our blessedness.

Fifthly, Consider, that there may be some gradual tendencies, or fainter essays, towards godliness, that fall short of real godliness, or come not up to that thorough change and determination of heart Godward, that is necessary to blessedness. There may be a returning, but not to the Most High, and wherein men may be (as the prophet immediately subjoins) like a deceitful bow, not fully bent, that will not reach the mark; they come not home to God. Many may be almost persuaded, and even within reach of heaven, not far from the kingdom of God; may seek to enter, and not be able; their hearts being somewhat inclinable, but more averse; for they can only be unable as they are unwilling. The soul is in no possibility of taking up a complacential rest in God, till it be brought to this,

self-motion. And then is it self-moved towards God, when its preponderating bent is towards him. As a massy stone that one attempts to displace, if it be heaved at till it preponderate, it then moves out by its own weight; otherwise it reverts, and lies where and as it did before. So 'tis with many men's hearts, all our lifting at them is but the rolling of the returning stone; they are moved, but not removed: sometimes they are lifted at in the public ministry of the word; sometimes by a private, seasonable admo nition; sometimes God makes an affliction his minis ter; a danger startles them; a sickness shakes them; and they think to change their course: but how soon do they change those thoughts, and are where they were! What enlightenings and convictions, what awakenings and terror, what remorses, what purposes, what tastes and relishes, do some find in their own hearts, that yet are blasted and come to nothing! How many miserable abortions after travailing pangs and throes, and fair hopes of a happy birth of the new creature! Often somewhat is produced that much resembles it, but is not it. No gracious principle but may have its counterfeit in an ungracious heart; whence they deceive not others only, but themselves, and think verily they are true converts while they are yet in their sins. How many wretched souls, that lie dubiously struggling a long time under the contrary alternate impressions of the gospel on the one hand, and the present evil world on the other; and give the day to their own sensual inclinations at last! In some degree, escape the corruptions of the world, by the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but are again entangled and overcome, so as their latter end is worse than their beginning. Such a man is so far from being advantaged by his former faint inclinations towards God, that he would be found at last under this aggravated wickedness beyond all other men; that when others wandered from God through inadvertency and inconsideration, this man will be found to have been his enemy upon deliberation, and against the various strivings of his convinced heart to the contrary. This is more eminently victorious and reigning enmity; such a one takes great pains to perish. Alas 'tis not a slight touch, an overly superficial tincture, some evanid sentiments of piety, a few good thoughts or wishes, that bespeak a new man, a new creature. Tis a thorough prevailing change, that quite alters the habitual posture of a man's soul, and determines it towards God, so as that the after-course of his life may be capable of that denomination, a living to God, a living after the spirit; that exalts the love of God into that supremacy in him, that it becomes the governing principle of his life, and the reason and measure of his actions; that as he loves him above all things else, better than his own life, so he can truly (though possibly sometimes with a doubtful, trembling heart) resolve the ordinary course of his daily walking and practice into that love, as the directive principle of it. I pray, I read, I hear, because I love God. I desire to be just, sober, charitable, meek, patient, because I love God. This is the perfection and end of the love of God, (therefore that must needs be the principle hereof,) obedience to his will. Herein appears that power of godliness denied (God knows) by too many that have the form: the spirit of love, power, and of a sound mind. That only is a sound mind in which such love rules in such power. Is not love to God often pretended by such that, whenever it comes to an actual competition, discover they love their own flesh a great deal more? that seldom ever cross their own wills to do his, or hazard their own fleshly interest to promote his interest? We may justly say, (as the apostle, in a case fitly enough reducible hither,) how dwells the love of God in that man? Notwithstanding such a subdued ineffectual love to God, such a one shall be denominated and dealt with as an enemy. 'Tis not likely any man on earth hates God so perfectly as those in hell. And is not every quality, not yet perfect in its kind, and that is yet growing more and more intense, in the meantime allayed by some degree of its contrary? Yet that over-mastered degree denominates not its subject, nor ought a man from