of its nature. The whole contexture and harmony of its doctrines, precepts, promises, threatenings, is for the exaltation of godliness. The objects of faith revealed are not merely speculative, to be conceived and believed only as true, or to be gazed on in an ecstasy of wonder, but are mysteries of godliness, that have a powerful influence upon practice. The design of God in the publication of them, is not only to enlighten the mind, but to warm the heart and purify the affections. God discovers his nature that we may imitate him, and his works that we may glorify him. All the precepts of the gospel are, to embrace Christ by a lively faith, to seek for righteousness and holiness in him; to live godly, righteously, and soberly in this present world. When our Saviour was on the earth, the end of his sermons, as appears in the gospel, was to regulate the lives of men, to correct their vicious passions, rather than to explicate the greatest mysteries. Other religions oblige their disciples either to some external actions that have no moral worth in them, so that it is impossible for any one that is guided by reason to be taken with such vanities; or they require things incommodious and burdensome. The priests of Baal cut themselves. And among the Chinese, though in great reputation for wisdom, their penitents expose themselves half naked to the injuries of the sharpest weather; with a double cruelty and pleasure of the devil, who makes them freeze here, and expects they should burn for ever hereafter. It is not the most strict observance of serious trifles, nor submitting to rigorous austerities, that enables the human nature, and commends us to God. The most zealous performers of things indifferent, and that chastise themselves with a bloody discipline, labor for nothing, and may pass to hell through purgatory. But the religion of Christ reforms the understanding and will, and all the actions depending on them. It chases away error, and vice, and hatred, and sheds a broad light and love, purity and peace; and forms on earth a lively representation of that pure society that is in heaven. The end of it is to render men like the angels in holiness, that they may be so in blessedness. This will render it amiable to all that consider it without passion. And it is worthy of observation, that although many heathens and heretics have contradicted other parts of the Christian religion; yet none have dared openly to condemn the moral part of it.

The effect of the gospel hath been answerable to the design. One main difference between the old and new law, is, that the old gave the knowledge of rules without power to observe them; the new, that is attended with the grace of Christ, enables us by a holy love to perform that which the other made men only to understand. Of this we have the most sensible evidence in the primitive church, that was produced by the first beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and had received the first fruits of the Spirit. What is more wonderful and worthy of God, than that perfect love which made all the first believers to have one heart, and one soul? What greater contempt of the world can be imagined, than the voluntary parting with all their goods, in consecrating them to God for the relief of the poor? And the churches of the Gentiles, while the blood of Christ was warm, and his actions fresh in the memories of men, were exemplary in holiness. They were as stars shining in a perverse generation. There was such a brightness in their conversations, that it pierced through the darkness of paganism, and made a visible difference between them and all others. Their words and actions were so full of zeal for the glory of God, of chastity, temperance, justice, charity, that the heathens from the holiness of their lives concluded the holiness of their laws, and that the doctrine that produced such fruits, could not be evil. The first light that discovered the truth of the Christian faith to many, was from the graces and virtues that appeared in the faithful. The purity of their lives, their courage in death, were as powerful to convert the world, as their sermons, disputations, and miracles. And those who were under such strong prejudices, that they would not examine the doctrine of the gospel, yet they could not but admire the integrity and innocency that was visible in the conversations of the Christians. They esteemed their persons from the good qualities that were visible in them, when they hated the Christian name for the concealed evil they unreasonably suspected to be under it. This Tertullian excellently represents in his Apology. The most part are so prejudiced against the name, and are possessed of such a blind hatred to it, that they make it a matter of reproach even to those whom they otherwise esteemed. Caius, they say, is a good man, he hath no fault, but that he is a Christian. Thus the excellent holiness of the possessors of the gospel forced a veneration from their enemies.

"That wisdom, Lord, on us bestow,
From every evil to depart;

To stop the mouth of every foe,

While upright both in life and heart,

The proofs of godly fear we give,

And show them how the Christians live."

FEBRUARY 8.

HOWE.

And he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.-Rev. xxi. 3.

WHEN once the saints are possessed of their promised heaven, their happiness will be complete, and will consist in being ever with the Lord. How pleasant to them will be the reflection: "The blessed God never beholds me but with delight! I shall always behold his serene countenance, his amiable face never covered with any clouds, never darkened with any frown! I shall now have cause to complain no more: My God is a stranger to me, he conceals himself, I cannot see his face, lo, he is encompassed with clouds and darkness, or with flames and terrors." These occasions are for ever ceased. For now," he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God." This imports union, and communion.

1. Union-closest union with the blessed God, a union which is not till now complete. In this union there is both relation and presence: not physical or local; for so nothing can be nearer God than it is: but moral and cordial, by which the holy soul with will and affections, guided by rectified reason and judgment, closes with, and embraces him; and he also upon wise forelaid counsel, and with infinite delight and love, embraces it so friends are said to be one, besides their relation as friends, by a union of hearts. A union between God and the creature, as to kind and nature higher than this, and lower than personal union, I understand not, and therefore say nothing of it.

But as to the union here mentioned: as, till the image of God be perfected, it is not completed; so it cannot but be perfect then. When the soul is perfectly formed according to God's own heart, and fully participates the Divine likeness, is perfectly like him, that likeness can not but infer the most intimate union

that two such natures can admit: that is, as to its nature, a loveunion; such as that which our Saviour mentions, and prays to the Father to perfect, between themselves and all believers, and among believers mutually with one another. Many much trouble themselves about this scripture; but sure that can be no other than a love-union. For, 1. It is such a union as Christians are capable of among themselves; for surely he would never pray that they might be one with a union whereof they were not capable. 2. It is such a union as may be made visible to the world. Whence it is an obvious inference, that the union between the Father and the Son, there spoken of as the pattern of this, is not their union or oneness in essence, though it must be a most acknowledged thing that there is such an essential union between them; for, who can conceive that saints should be one among themselves, and with the Father and the Son, with such a union as the Father and the Son are one themselves, if the essential union between the Father and the Son were the union here spoken of: but the exemplary or pattern union, here mentioned between the Father and Son, is but a union in mind, in love, in design, and interest; wherein he prays, that saints on earth might visibly be one with them also, that the world might believe. It is yet a rich pleasure that springs up to glorified saints from that love-union, now perfected, between the blessed God and them. It is mentioned and shadowed in Scripture, under the name and notion of marriage-union; in which the greatest mutual complacency is always supposed a necessary ingredient. To be thus joined to the Lord, and made as it were one spirit with him; for the eternal God to cleave in love to a nothing-creature, as his likeness upon it engages him to do; is this no pleasure, or a mean one?

2. Communion: unto which that union is fundamental, and introductive; and which follows it upon the same ground, from a natural propensity of like to like. There is nothing now to hinder God and the holy soul of the most inward fruitions and enjoyments; no animosity, no strangeness, no unsuitableness on either part. Here the glorified spirits of the just have liberty to solace themselves amidst the rivers of pleasure at God's own right hand, without check or restraint. They are pure, and these pure. They touch nothing that can defile, they defile nothing they can touch. They are not now forbidden the nearest ap

proaches to the once inaccessible majesty; there is no holy of holies into which they may not enter, no door locked up against them. They may have free admission into the innermost secret of the Divine presence, and pour forth themselves in the most liberal effusions of love and joy: as they must be the eternal subject of those infinitely richer communications from God, even of immense and boundless love and goodness. Do not debase this pleasure by low thoughts, nor frame too daring, positive apprehensions of it. It is yet a secret to us. The eternal converses of the King of glory with glorified spirits, are only known to himself and them. That expression, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," seems left on purpose to check a too envious and prying inquisitiveness into these unrevealed things. The great God will have his reserves of glory, of love, of pleasure for that future state. Let him alone awhile, with those who are already received into those mansions of glory, those everlasting habitations he will find a time for those who are yet pilgrims and wandering exiles, to ascend and enter too. In the mean time what we know of this communion may be gathered up into this general account, the reciprocation of loves; the flowing and reflowing of everlasting love, between the blessed soul and its infinitely blessed God; its egress towards him, his illapses into it.

"Knowing as I am known,

How shall I love that word,
And oft repeat before the throne,
For ever with the Lord?"

FEBRUARY 9.

REYNOLDS.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born amongst many brethren. -Rom. viii. 29.

For two great ends did Christ come into the world; a restitution of us to our interest in salvation, and a restoring our original qualities of holiness unto us. He came to sanctify and cleanse the church, that it should be holy and without blemish; unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight: to redeem and to purify his people. The one is the work of his merit, which goeth upward to the satisfaction of his Father; the other, the