him all the room that it hath; it entertains him with the widest arms, and the sweetest smiles; and if he depart and withdraw, fetches him again with the deepest groans, Return, return, O Prince of peace, and make me an everlasting habitation of righteousness unto thyself!

It will not be amiss here briefly to touch upon the reason of the godly soul's so ardent pantings after God. And here I might show first, negatively, that it springs not from any carnal ambition of being better and higher than others, not from any carnal hope of impunity and safety, nor merely from the bitter sense of pressing and tormenting afflictions in this life. But I shall rather insist upon it affirma tively. These earnest breathings after God spring from the feeling apprehensions of self-indigency and insufficiency, and the powerful sense of divine goodness and fulness; they are begotten of the divine bounty and self-sufficiency, manifesting itself to the spirits of men, and conceived and brought forth by a deep sense of self-poverty. One might almost apply the Apostle's words to this purpose, "We receive the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in him." I shall not discourse upon these two heads disjunctly, but frame them into one notion, and so you may take it thus; these holy longings of the godly soul after God, do arise from the sense of its distance from God. Το be so far distant from God, who is life and love itself, and the proper and full happiness of the soul, is grievous to the soul that is rightly affected towards him and hence it is that the soul cannot be at rest, but still longs to be more intimately joined to him,

and more perfectly filled with him and the clearer the soul's apprehensions are of its object, and the deeper its sense is of its own unlikeness to him, and distance from him, the more strong and impatient are its breathings; insomuch that not only fear, as the Apostle speaks, but even love itself sometimes seems to itself to have a kind of agony and torment in itself; which made the spouse cry, she was sick of love, that is, sick of every thing that kept her from her love, sick of that distance at which she stood from her beloved Lord. The godly soul being ravished with the infinite sweetness and goodness of God, longs to be that rather than what itself is; and beholding how it is estranged from him, by many sensual loves, selfish passions, corporeal clogs and distractions, bewails its distance, and cries out within itself, "Oh when shall I come and appear before God!" Oh when will God come and appear gloriously to me and in me! me from this body of death!" were swallowed up of life! for God as earnestly, and more properly, than they that watch for the morning; they may be said rather to be weary of the long and cold and troublesome night, than properly covetous of the day; but he, out of a pure and spiritual sense of his estrangement from God, longs to appear before him, and be wrapped up in him. Heal the godly man of all his afflictions, grievances, adversities in the world, that he may have nothing to trouble him, nor put him to pain; yet he is not quiet, he is in pain because of the distance at which he stands from God: give him the whole world, and all the glory of it, yet he has not

"Who will deliver Oh that mortality David's soul did wait

enough; he still cries, and craves, "Give, give," because he is not entirely swallowed up in God: he openeth his mouth wide, as the Psalmist speaks, and all the silver and gold, peace, health, liberty, preferment, that you cast into it, cannot fill it; because they are not God, he cannot look upon them as his chiefest good. In a word, a godly man doth not so much say, in the sense either of sin or affliction, "Oh that one would give me the wings of a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest!" as in the sense of his dissimilitude to, and distance from God, Oh that one would give me the wings of an angel, that I might fly away towards heaven !

An expostulation with Christians concerning their remiss and sluggish temper; an attempt to convince them of it by some considerations; which are, 1. The activity of worldly men. 2. The restless appetites of the body. 3. The strong propensions of every creature towards its own centre: an inquiry into the slothfulness and inactivity of Christian souls. The grace of faith vindicated from the slander of being merely passive. A short attempt to awaken Christians unto greater vigour and activity.

WE have seen in what respects religion is an active principle in the soul where it is seated; give me leave to enlarge a little here for conviction or reprehension. By this property of true religion we shall be able to discover much that is false and counterfeit in the world. If religion be no lazy, languid, sluggish, passive thing, but life, love, the spirit of power and freedom, a fire burning, a well of water springing up, as we have sufficiently seen, what shall we say then of that heavy, sluggish, spiritless kind of religion that most men take up with? Shall we call it a spirit of life, with the Apostle; and yet allow of a religion that is cold and dead? Shall we call it a spirit of love and power, with the same Apostle; and yet allow of it, though it be indifferent, low, and impotent? Or will such pass for current with the wise and holy God, if we should favourable censure upon pass a it? And why should it ever pass with men, if it will not for

heart so

ever pass with God? But, indeed, how can this inactivity and sluggishness pass for religion amongst men? Who can think you are in pursuit of the infinite and supreme good, that sees you so slow in your motions towards it? Who can think that your treasure is in heaven, that sees your far from thence? The more any thing partakes of God, and the nearer it comes to him who is the fountain of life, and power, and virtue, the more active, powerful, and lively will it be. We read of an atheistical generation in Zeph. i. 12. who fancied to themselves an idle and slothful God, that minded not the affairs of the world at all, saying, "The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil;" which was also the false and gross conceit of many of the heathen, as Cicero confesses of some of the philosophers themselves, "who maintain that God has no power in himself, and can impart no power to any other" and, indeed, though it be not so blasphemous, yet it is almost as absurd, to fancy an idle saint, as an idle deity. Sure I am, if it be not altogether impossible, yet it is altogether a shameful and deformed sight; a holy soul in a lethargy, a godly soul that is not in pursuit of God. Moses indeed bids Israel "stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord;" but there is no such divinity in the Holy Scriptures as this, 'stand still and see the salvation of the soul,' though some have violently pressed those words, Exod. xiv. 13. to serve under their slothful standard: no, no, the Scripture speaks to us in another manner- 66 work out your own salvation:" and, indeed, the Spirit of God doth every where describe religion by the activity, industry,