He did, he came. O my Redeemer dear, O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Yet if thou stayest still, why must I stay? My God, what is This world of wo. this world to me? Hence, all ye clouds, away; What is this weary world? This meat and drink, Into a blackness and distaste? O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. With one small sigh thou gav'st me th' other day, I blasted all the joys about me; And scowling on them as they pin'd away; O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake, Some may dream merrily, but when they awake, Or take me up to thee. We talk of harvests; there are no such things, There is no fruitful years, but that which brings Or take me up to thee. O loose this frame; this knot of man untie, O show thyself to me, What have I left that I should stay and groan; The most of me to heaven is fled : My thoughts and joys are all pack'd up and gone, And for their old acquaintance plead. O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season; And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. AN ADDITION ΤΟ THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER OF THE THIRD PART OF THE SAINT'S REST. IT hath seemed meet to Mr. K. to second Mr. Crandon, by an impetuous opposition of my poor labours; and having in his first volume against Mr. G. assaulted my Aphorisms; in the second, to fall upon my Method for Peace of Conscience,' and my book of Rest;' against the twelfth chapter (misprinted the eleventh) of the Third Part, he hath a copious digression, which I will now not characterise, either as to the intellectuals or morals, the judgment or honesty appearing in it; having reserved that to a second and plain admonition to himself. But because I intended these writings for ordinary capacities, I would have nothing remain in them which may be an occasion of their stumbling for the sake therefore of such readers as would neither err, nor be puzzled with contentious janglings about mere words, I shall give them this brief advertisement following. It is so far from my desire to teach men to build the peace of their consciences upon any nice philosophical controversies, much less on any errors or singular opinions of mine, that I desire nothing more than to lead them to, and leave them on, the plain, infallible word of God. My own judgment concerning that sincere, saving grace, which we may safely try our estates by, I have as plainly as I could laid down in that chapter, and my 'Directions for Peace;' and in sect. 39, to sect. 53, of my Reply to Mr. Blake:' from whence I must desire the reader to fetch it, and not from the interpretations of Mr. K., which so seldom hath the hap to be acquainted with the truth, and who professeth himself that he doth not understand me: whether it be long of me or himself I determine not. To these I shall now add only these few words. : The everlasting enjoyment of God in glory by perfected man, is the felicity which all should desire and seek. This is propounded to us by God in his word, and the necessary mean thereto prescribed; even Jesus Christ, and faith in him, and obedience to him, and to God in and by him. The distempered, sensual appetite, and depraved will of man, do incline to inferior sensual delights. God hath resolved that these shall not be their felicity, and that they shall never be happy in the enjoyment of him, except they take him for their chief good, and so far forsake inferior good which would draw the heart from him and except also they give up themselves to his Son Jesus Christ, and to his Spirit, to be recovered unto him. Though all men by nature desire to be happy; yet all do not desire God as their happiness. Nor do the regenerate themselves yet perfectly desire him, or perfectly forsake that inferior good; which was their supposed happiness before they were renewed. The understanding is commonly acknowledged to have three kinds of acts: 1. A simple apprehension of the mere entity of a thing, or of a simple term; 2. Judgment, or the conception of a complex term; 3. Discourse. The first alone moves not the will, because it concludes not of the goodness or evil of the thing apprehended. The second, judgment, is either about the end or the means: and either absolute or comparative. Several things are commonly called man's end, how properly I now inquire not. 1. Felicity in general; 2. Himself the subject, commonly called the finis cui; 3. The natural and moral perfection of his person; 4. The act of fruition, or perfect complacency in the blessed object upon a full vision; commonly called, our formal felicity: 5. The object itself, that is, the blessed God, commonly called our objective felicity, and our finis qui, or cujus, whether fitly, we shall better know hereafter. The two first nature hath tied us to; but not to the object, nor to the perfection of the soul in a spiritual suitableness thereto. The first absolute judgment produceth in the will a simple complacency or displacency; this is the first motion of the will. The comparative judgment, where it is necessary, produceth intention and election, or else refusal, and resolves the fluctuating will. Where there is but one good propounded, either one ob jective end, or one means of absolute necessity, or wherever there is omnimoda ratio boni, nothing but good apparent in the object, there is no work for consultation, or the comparative act of judgment, and consequently for election: but the absolute judgment would proceed to the practical, and carry out the will to intention and prosecution: were not man's soul blinded and depraved, there should be no deliberation about his end, and so no choosing of God as our end, but an absolute intending him, as having no competitor: and it cannot be without great sin for the judgment to make any question or comparison, and so to deliberate, Whether God or the creature be our felicity; and, Whether God or our carnal selves should be our end? But seeing our depraved judgment and will, and vitiated senses, and the tempter's setting the creature in competition with God, do necessitate a comparative judgment and deliberation, even about our end itself; therefore there is a kind of election of God as before the creature, or a consent or resolution so to prefer him, that is necessary, before or with a right intention and prosecution of that end besides, the election of the new means, that is necessary; seeing Satan and our flesh are so ready to propound wrong means, in competition with the means of God's prescribing. All this being so, I further add, that the same will that hath a complacency in a thing as judged simply good, may yet reject and nill it, or refuse to seek or receive it, if it be judged either a lesser good inconsistent with a greater, or any way to have more evil in it than good and as the understanding doth at once apprehend it as good absolutely, or in some respect; and evil in other respects, and comparatively less good; so doth the will at once continue to love or will it so far as it is apprehended as good; and to nill and reject it as inconsistent with a greater good, or a hinderer of it. But if it fall out that the inconsistency of these is not discerned or believed, or but imperfectly, then may the will, by a practical volition, will them both. To apply this. The understanding of the ungenerate may know that God is good, and good to them, and that in very many and weighty respects he is desirable. They may know that worldly things will shortly leave them, and then if they have not God's favour they shall perish. But if they have, they shall attain both perfection of body, (which they may desire,) and perfection of mind, (which they do desire in general, and may submit to in the particular way of holiness, as more tolerable than hell,) besides some imperfect ineffectual knowledge of a beauty and desirableness in holiness itself, accompa |