of God as these are, would make such vehement impressions upon you, and have that force and power over you, that you would be always restless and unquiet, never thinking yourselves well, but when you are doing something wherein ye may serve Him, and manifest your love, obedience, and thankfulness unto Him.

2. And what happy, as well as holy creatures would you then be! For so far as you think and contemplate aright upon God, you do indeed partake of that happiness for which alone your persons were at first designed, and your natures fitted. You would in a manner live in Heaven, whilst you are upon earth; your souls would be above, although your bodies be below; and, by consequence, nothing upon earth would disturb your happiness, or make you miserable: for whatsoever happens here below, is still below you, whose thoughts are soaring aloft as high as Heaven, there contemplating of, and enjoying Him that governs the world, and orders all things in it; by which means, in the midst of all the storms and tempests which may be raised without, you will still have calmness and tranquillity, peace and happiness within; because by your continually thinking upon God, as managing and disposing of all things in the world by His Almighty power and infinite wisdom, and especially if you think upon Him as your Redeemer too, as well as Maker, and as one reconciled unto you by the death of Christ, then I say, you cannot but repose that trust and confidence in Him, which will enable you to cry out with David in the midst of all outward calamities which you either feel or fear, " My heart is fixed, Ps. 57. 7. O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise."

Thus now you have seen how God ought to be in all your thoughts, and what extraordinary advantages will accrue to you by it. I hope I need not use any more arguments to persuade you to call in your thoughts from other things, and to fix them upon Him that made them, and so bring them thither where they were at first designed to dwell. And if there be any here present, who shall still suffer their thoughts to spend themselves upon the impertinent toys and trifles of this lower world, and not raise them up to God, I shall take the boldness to tell such amongst you, that you

SERM. CXLII.

are wicked men; this being the great character and mark which the Holy Ghost here gives of a wicked man. And, therefore, whatsoever outward profession you make of religion, you have nothing of pure and true religion within you; for as God is the only object of all religion, so is serious thinking of Him the very first act of religion which we can perform unto Him, and without which all religious services whatsoever have nothing of true piety and devotion in them. And, therefore, being desirous to be instrumental in directing you all how to become real Saints, truly pious, and heirs of Salvation, I have endeavoured to explain this great duty unto you, which is indeed the ground and foundation of all other duties whatsoever, which you can or ought to perform to Almighty God. Let me, therefore, beseech you once again to be serious in labouring after it, and to take pains with your backward hearts to bring them to it; have God always before your eyes: let Him remain continually in your thoughts; and oft-times retiring yourselves quite from the world, raise up your thoughts higher and higher, and when you have got them as high as possibly you can, then conceive of God, as One that is infinitely higher than them all; and never give over till you find yourselves at a loss, amazed at the infinite perfections of so great, so glorious, so immutable, so supereminent, so incomprehensible a Being, and so melt away into an holy longing and desiring to come to that blessed place, where in and through Christ you shall do nothing else but behold that All-Glorious Being face to face, and without any disturbance or interruption from the creatures, enjoy His presence, partake of His favour, adore His perfections, sing forth His praises, extol His mercy, His wisdom, power, and glory, and have Him continually and perfectly in your thoughts and affections unto all eternity.

SERMON CXLIII.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING OUR SINS FORGIVEN.

PSALM XXXI. 1.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

WE who are here assembled this morning to perform our worship and homage to Him that made us, although we were all made of the same mould, and had the image of God enstamped upon us all alike; yet it is strange to observe how much difference there is amongst us: difference in our callings, and difference in our conditions in the world; difference in the temperature of our bodies, and difference in the dispositions of our minds; difference in our judgments and opinions, and difference in our passions and affections; some loving what others hate, others hating what some love; some fearing what others hope for, and some hoping for what others fear; some desiring others' detestations, others detesting their desires: but, notwithstanding, there is one thing that we all agree in ; that is, we all desire to be happy: yet even in this too we do not so much agree in the desire of happiness, but we differ as much in the prosecution of it. To be happy in general we all desire; but, according to the diversity of our tempers and dispositions, we have divers notions and conceptions of happiness itself, and also of the object of it; and it is a rare thing to find one that hits upon the right; for, we living only by sense, and conversing ordinarily with nothing but dirt and clay, we are generally grown so low-spirited and earthly-minded, as not to fancy

SERM.

CXLIII.

or aim at any higher happiness, than what we can pick out of our fellow-creatures upon earth, contenting ourselves with the lowest and meanest things imaginable, for the object of that which we account our happiness. Thus we may observe some so brutish, as to place the happiness of their souls only in pleasing and gratifying of their senses, and so, though capable of the joys of Angels, look no higher than to be fellow-commoners with the brutes that perish. Others please themselves with pleasing others, and fancy themselves no farther happy, than they think that others fancy them to be so, and so place their own happiness in other men's fickle fancies and variable opinions of them. Another sort of men there is amongst us, that may rather be termed worms than men, in that they feed upon nothing but dust and clay, even disdain not to stoop so low as to lick up the serpent's food, making the fancied riches of this transient world the only object of their souls' desires, and so compute their happiness from the greatness of their crop, or fulness of their trade; from the largeness of their estates, or success of their adventures but we cannot but all know how frequently we are mistaken in our opinions of things; and none of us but must needs have found by experience before now, that there is no real happiness to be enjoyed in any of these things; all things here below being so far from satisfying our immortal souls, and by consequence from making of us truly happy, that we are ordinarily miserable in the enjoyment of them, and always capable of enjoying more than they are able to afford us.

Now, seeing that we all desire to be happy, and yet often find ourselves so fearfully mistaken about that happiness which we do desire, it must needs behove us all to consult some other person besides ourselves about it, that we may rightly understand what true happiness is, and which is the ready way that leads unto it; otherwise we may trudge about the world all our lives long, and encompass both sea and land to search for happiness, and shall never find it: but questionless there is none can better certify us what our happiness is, than He Who first made us capable of being happy; and in the enjoyment of Whom alone we can be so. I suppose there is none here present but understand Whom I

mean, even the all-wise and eternal God, Whom I hope you all believe to be a competent judge in this case, and are willing to submit your judgments unto His; but, if you consult Him in this business, He will tell you quite another story than you ever heard, or perhaps so much as thought of; for He hath given you His opinion under His hand concerning your happiness, in the Holy Scriptures, left upon record on purpose to shew wherein our happiness doth consist, and which is the way that leads unto it. But in all the Scriptures you never find Him calling them happy which you fancy or esteem to be so; for where doth He ever say, Blessed are the rich, for they have great estates; blessed are the honourable, that have much applause; or blessed are the voluptuous, for they enjoy the pleasures of this world? No, no, when He speaks of happiness, He speaks after another rate: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are [Matt. 5. they that mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are the 1.] undefiled in the way, that walk in the Law of the Lord;" and, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered." And indeed this is that blessedness which makes way for all the other, and without which we shall never know what it is to be blessed or happy; so that if you will take the Word of Almighty God Himself, and trust His judgment concerning your happiness, here you have it in as plain terms as you could desire, or as Himself could have delivered His opinion in; for though David was the person that spake these words, it was from the Spirit of God that he spake them, by Whose order also and command, he spake so emphatically, and with admiration,

DEN, 'Oh the happiness! oh the blessedness of such a man whose trangression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.' The very reading of which words, methinks, should make us impatient and restless, till we understand the true meaning of them, and know who it is whom God Himself esteems an happy and blessed man, even he “whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered."

From whence we may observe in general, that all men naturally are sinful and miserable; yea, therefore miserable because sinful, and that our misery cannot be removed till "our sins are covered;" nor our persons blessed, until our

3-5; Ps.119.