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thy deliverance, and the bosom of everlasting love, and the society of the wise, and just, and holy, and of the end of all thy troubles, and the entrance into the joy of thy Lord, and the place and state of all thy hope. Oh, say, not notionally only, as from argumentative conviction, but confidently, and with glad desire and hope, to depart and be with Christ, is far better than to be here.

But, O my God, I have much more hope in speaking to thee than to myself. Long may I plead with this dark and dull, yet fearful soul, before I can plead it into joyful hopes and heavenly desires, unless thou shine on it with the light of thy countenance, and thou, whom my soul must trust and love, wilt give me faith and love themselves. I thank thee for convincing arguments but had this been all the strength of my faith and hope, the tempter might have proved too subtle for me in dispute. I thank thee that some experience tells me, that a holy appetite to heavenly work, and a love to the heavenly company and state, doth more to make me willing to die, and think, with pleasure, of my change, than ever bare arguments would have done. Oh, send down the streams of thy love into my soul, and that will powerfully draw it up by longings for the near and full fruition! Oh, give me more of the divine and heavenly nature, and it will be natural and easy to me to desire to be with thee: send more of the heavenly joys into this soul, and it will long for heaven, the place of joy! I must not hope on earth for any such acquaintance with the world above as is proper to the enjoying state. But if the sun can send its illuminating, warming rays, to such a world as this, according to the various disposition of the recipients; doubtless thou hast thy effectual, though unsearchable, ways, of illuminating, sanctifying, and attractive influence on souls. And one such beam of thy pleased face, one taste of thy complacential love, will kindle my love, and draw up my desires, and make my pains and sickness tolerable; I shall then put off this clothing with the less reluctancy, and willingly leave my flesh to the dust, and sing my nunc dimittis, when I have thus seen and tasted thy salvation. O my God, let not thy strengthening, comforting grace now forsake me, lest it should overwhelm me with the fears of being finally forsaken. Dwell in me as the God of love and joy, that I may long to dwell in love and joy with thee for ever. As grace abounded where sin abounded, let thy strengthening and comforting mercy abound when weakness increaseth, and my ne

cessities abound. My flesh and my heart faileth, Jut thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever: this short life is almost at an end; but thy loving-kindness is better than life: I know not with what pains thou wilt further try me; but if I love thee, thou hast promised that all things shall work together for my good. The world that I am going to by death is not apparent to my sight; but my life is hid with Christ in God; and, because he liveth, we shall live; and we shall be with him where he is; and when he appeareth, we shall appear with him in glory; and shall enter into our Master's joy, and be for ever with the Lord. Amen.

What sensible manifestation of his kingdom Christ gave in his transfiguration.

Sect. 1. Our Lord, who brought life and immortality to light, well knew the difficulty of believing so great things unseen and therefore it pleased him to give men some sensible helps by demonstration. In Matt. xvi. and xvii. 1, 2, &c.; Mark ix. 1; Luke ix. 28, he promised some of his disciples a sight of his kingdom as coming in power; or such a glimpse as Moses had of the back parts of God's glory: this he performed first in his transfiguration, as afterward in his resurrection, ascension, and sending the Holy Ghost to enable them, with power, to preach, and work miracles, and convert the nations.

Sect. 2. By the kingdom of God, is meant God's government of his holy ones, by a heavenly communication of life, light, and love, initially, on earth by grace, and perfectly in heaven by glory. A special theocracy.

Sect. 3. For the understanding of this we must know, that when God had made man good, in his image, he conversed with him in a heavenly manner, either immediately, or by an angel, speaking to him, and telling him his will. But man being made a free, self-determining agent, he was left to choose whom he would follow and hearkening unto Satan, and turning from God, he became a slave of Satan, and gave him advantage to be his deceiving ruler: not that man's rebellion nullified God's power, or disposing government, or took man from under obligation to obedience; but that, forsaking God, he was much, though not wholly, forsaken by his special, fatherly, approving government, and left to Satan and his own will: but the eternal Word interposing for man's reprival and redemption, undertook to break the serpent's head, and to conquer and cast out

him that had deceived and captivated man: and, choosing out a special seed, he made them a peculiar people, and set up a heavenly, prophetical government over them, himself, by heavenly revelation, making their laws, and choosing their chief governors under him, from time to time, and would not leave it to blind and sinful man to make laws, or choose princes, for themselves, but would keep them in a special dependence upon heaven. But the carnal Israelites having provoked God by odious idolatry to deny them much of the benefit of government (save when they repented, and cried to him for help) they thought to amend this by choosing a king like other nations, and ending their dependence on heavenly revelation, and choice for government and so theocracy was turned into a more human regiment, and God more cast off: though yet he would not quite forsake them. And the rest of the world was yet more left under the power of Satan, and their own corrupted mind and will; so that Satan hath both an internal kingdom in wicked souls, and a visible political government of the wicked kingdoms of the world, ruling them by men that are ruled by him. And as Christ came to cast him out of men's hearts by his sanctifying, conquering Spirit, so also to cast him out of the political Government of the kingdoms of the world, and to bring them under the laws, and officers, and Spirit of Christ, and rule them by heavenly power and love as his own kingdoms, that he may bring them to perfection in one celestial kingdom at last. And in this sense we pray, 66 Thy kingdom come."

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Sect. 4. To make men believe that he is the heavenly King sent from God, to cast down Satan's kingdom, was the great business of the preaching of the gospel this he would demonstrate, as by all his miracles which showed him to have the victory of devils, and to be the Lord of life, so also by visible apparition in glory. And it is said, (1 John v. 7, 8,) that there are three witnesses in heaven, and three on earth, so here Christ would have three heavenly and three earthly witnesses of his transfiguration. From heaven he had the witness, 1. Of a voice, proclaiming, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear him." 2. Of Moses, the chief law-giver. 3. And of Elias, the chief prophet; to tell us, that the law and the prophets are his prognosticating witnesses: but "hear him" notifieth to us, that Christ and his gospel are to be heard above the law and the prophets, and to teach us more than they could teach us the law was given by Moses (with its types and sha

dows) but grace and truth (the substance so typified) are by Jesus Christ.

Sect. 5. Light and glory are often of the same signification. Christ was transfigured into a lucid, glorious appearance of body: he tells us by this, that he would have us have some sort of idea of his kingdom, fetched from sense many apparitions of angels have been in lights. Christ appeared to Saul in a visible light. (Acts ix.) So did he to John: (Rev. i, &c. :) God and the Lamb are the light of the New Jerusalem. It is an inheritance of the saints in light.

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Some seem to me to think too basely of/sense, and too far to separate it from intellectual spirits, both as to power, act, and object and all because they find it in/lower creatures. They might accordingly deny substantiality to spirits, because brutes are substances: the higher have all the perfections of the lower, either formally or eminently. It is not a spirit's perfection to be insensible, or to have nothing to do with sensible things, but to be eminently sensible, and to be superior agents on lower sensibles. God is love and love is complacency: and a high degree of complacency is delight or joy. So that God is essential, infinite joy, but without that drossy quality which is proper to souls in flesh, and all that imperfection which belongs to creatures. Can we tell what it is to enter into our Master's joy, or joyfully to love and praise him, without any sense: I rather think, that as vigorous youth makes men capable of more delight than decrepit, languid, painful age and sickness, so heaven shall, by perfecting our natures, make them capable of inconceivably more joy than any on earth is capable of.

And as we shall have sense in exaltation as to power and act, so we shall have sensible objects. God himself delighteth in all his works, and so shall we. We must not, on pretence of taking the heavenly Jerusalem to be merely spiritual, deprive ourselves of all the sensible ideas of it which God's descriptionoffereth to us. Light is sensible; Christ glorified there is sensible; Moses and Elias were sensible to Peter, James, and Johu. Lazarus and Abraham were sensible to the man in hell. (Luke xvi. Stephen saw heaven open, and Christ sitting at the right hand of God. And all eyes shall see him at his glorious return. Heavenly glory is not enjoyed only by inere thinking and knowing, nor as in a dream, but by the most eminent intellectual sensation, exalted and invigorated.

Seét. 6. Say not then, O my soul, that this kingdom of glory

is so far above thee, that thou canst have no idea of it. Think not that it is therefore unmeet for thy desiring and joyful hopes, because thou canst not know what it is. Hast thou no conception of the difference between light and darkness? If thou hadst been but one year kept in absolute darkness, wouldest thou have no desiring thoughts of light? The blind think themselves half dead while they are alive. Indeed, the faculty and object must be suitable; light may be too great for our weak eyes, as heat may be torment in an unsuitable degree; but when our souls are perfected, they will be suitable recipients of a more glorious light than we can here endure. Moses is not there covered in a cleft of the rock, because he could see but as the back part of God's glory. We must see here but as in a glass, but there as face to face. Though these organical eyes, as spectacles, shall be laid by, we shall have media more perfect, suitable to our perfect state.

And as I can think of heaven as a region of glorious light, so can I think of it as a place and state of life and love. I know somewhat of the difference of life and death, and that a living dog is better than a dead lion. And I have felt what it is to love my friends, and thence to desire their near communion as my delight; and can I then have no idea of that world, where life, light, and joyful love are the very element of souls, as water is to the fishes?

And as I can have some idea of that state in general, so may I of the state of the perfected spirits of the just which are there. They are connatural to their proper element. They are essential, created life, light, and love. And they want not substance to be the basis of those formal powers, nor objects on which to exercise them. Think not, then, that heaven is so far inconceivable, as not by any idea to be thought of. If we have no conception of it, we can have no desires of it, and no delightful* hope. What can we conceive of more certainly than of life, and light, and love; of a region, and of persons essentiated of these? Do we not know what knowledge is, and see what light is, and feel what life and love are?

But it is true that our conceptions hereof are lamentably imperfect; and so they must be till possession, fruition, and exercise, perfect them. Who knoweth what light or sight is, but by seeing; or what knowledge is, but by knowing; or what love and joy are, but bv ove and rejoicing? And who knows

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