which health is to the body; and without it there can be no spiritual enjoyment. Aversion to God and the exercises of religious worship, pride, ambition, envy, hatred, avarice, and sensuality, are diseases of the soul, which produce uneasiness, and tend to misery. But the capacity of perceiving and delighting in the consummate glory and beauty of the divine perfections, and a disposition supremely to love, admire, and adore the excellency of God, as manifested in his works; sweetly acquiescing in his precepts and providential appointments; united with humility, gratitude, simple dependence, holy zeal, expansive love of our brethren and neighbours, justice, purity, temperance, truth, and meekness, constitute a healthful state of mind. As far as these prevail, we enjoy heaven; and when contrary principles have the ascendancy, we experience a misery in a degree resembling that of hell.

The joys of heaven are (rationally as well as scripturally) supposed to consist in the manifested presence and complete enjoyment of God: but as he is infinitely holy, what happiness could the beatifick vision afford to the sensual, the dissipated, the covetous, the ambitious, or the profane? Unless we are previously made meet for these pure and spiritual pleasures; the society, the objects, the employments, and the adorations, which constitute the happiness of the saints in light, would be wholly incongruous to us: we should be out of our element in the holy residence of God: every thing would weary, disgust, or distress us: even the happiness enjoyed by others would excite our envy and malignant passions: our dissatisfied minds would be tempted to wish the interruption or destruction of

those joy's which we could not share: finding this impossible, our torture would be increased, and we should wish to retire from a scene which so disquieted us; nor would rebellion and blasphemous thoughts of God himself fail to arise in our disappointed hearts. So that admission into heaven (were that possible,) could not preserve unholy creatures from positive misery.

It should also be observed, that the holiness and happiness of pardoned sinners must have an intimate connexion with the remembrance of their former state and character, and the manner of their deliverance. Deep humiliation, ardent gratitude for such unmerited mercy, and an especial regard to the condescending compassion of their great Redeemer, who shed his blood for their salvation, must be essential to that holiness to which they are recovered: and it is impossible, but that they should have a whole system of feelings, (so to speak,) peculiar to themselves, in which creatures that never sinned, cannot have any commu. nion with them. The objects of their special contemplation, the topicks on which they will delight to expatiate, and the sources of their love, joy, gratitude, and adoration, must differ from those of such rational agents, as never were in their situation, and never wanted a similar deliverance: even as a condemned traitor, who being penitent has received pardon and great preferment, must have other sensations and cause for gratitude, than those courtiers have, whose loyalty has never been interrupted.

The scriptural representations, therefore, of the heaven into which pardoned sinners are admitted, peculiarly relate to their continual ascriptions of praise to

God, and to the Lamb that was slain, and who redeemed them with his blood; as it might rationally have been supposed that they would. If then, it were possible for a sinner to be recovered to the favour of God, and to angelick holiness, without self-abasement for sin, gratitude for redemption, and a strong attach ment to the Person, honour, and cause of the Redeemer: he could not join the songs of the saints in light, assist in their adorations, or participate their peculiar joys. Nay, he must either shun or be excluded from the society of angels, if he did not judge "the Lamb "that was slain," worthy of all possible honour, worship, power, and love, from every creature in the whole universe.

It is indeed impossible, that a sinner can be made holy, without being brought into that frame of mind which hath been described, as the indispensable qualification for heaven; a wedding-garment, the want of which will ensure any man's exclusion, when the King shall come to see the guests. But if this could not be so undeniably proved; the Lord would nevertheless have full right to determine, that without this judgment, these affections, and this capacity for the work and worship of heaven, no man should find admission thither; and to decree irreversibly, that unless a measure of this holy state of mind be obtained on earth, the sinner's exclusion shall be final and eternal; that the "wicked shall be driven away in his wick. "edness," and that he "shall be destroyed for

ever."

He hath also a sovereign right to appoint the manner, in which sinners shall be made partakers of these

qualifications. This part of our subject comprises the doctrine of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit, which evidently constitutes a grand peculiarity, and an essential part, of revelation: nor can any man consistently allow the divine authority of the scriptures, and interpret them soberly, according to the common rules of language, without being constrained to own the necessity of a divine influence from the Spirit of God, to communicate spiritual life to those who were dead in sin, and utterly incapable of relishing the holy pleasures of communion with God, and other exercises of pure religion; and to recover the soul to the divine image, by a gradual transformation and renovation; and that without such a supernatural change, no sinner can be saved.

This doctrine is commonly derided and vilified as irrational and enthusiastick, without any discrimination of the different ways, in which it may be, and hath been, explained. Yet, if indeed the Lord be perfectly holy, and the society, employment, and joys of heaven be also holy; and if it be allowed, (what a man must be hardy to deny, since facts demonstrate it,) that we are naturally carnal, and have no relish for spiritual excellency or spiritual pleasures: then the doctrine will be seen to have as firm a ground in reason as in scripture. Such an entire internal change must take place, or men can never delight in God, or be happy in heaven. A divine Agent must produce a renovation, to which all other power is evidently inadequate, and which is energetically represented in scripture, under the metaphors of a new birth, a new cre

ation, and a resurrection from the death of sin unto newness of life.

Indeed facts evince, that they, who reject this appointed method of sanctification, uniformly continue enslaved to some sinful passion, and entire strangers to that spirituality which capacitates the soul to delight in such services on earth, as correspond in some measure with the work and worship of heaven. And, surely, the Lord hath a right to leave those under the power of their proud and carnal nature, who refuse to depend on the promised influences of the divine Spirit to renew their souls to the image of God in rightcousness and true holiness! He cannot be under any obligation to exert his omnipotence to rescue from sin` and misery, those persons, who deny the possibility, or reality, of such a change, or who deride, despise, and revile it. If men think that they can make themselves holy, they are allowed to try what they can do: but if they persist in the vain attempt, or rest satisfied without an internal renovation; the Lord may justly leave them" to be filthy still," and exclude them as polluted from his holy inheritance.

Moreover, the Lord hath a right to give the Holy Spirit, in what way he sees good: and he hath promised this inestimable blessing, through the mediation of his Son, as the purchase of his atonement, and the fruit of his intercession, to be sought by faith in his name. But many seem to detach the work of the Spirit from redemption by the blood of Christ; and to forget that his principal office is to glorify the Saviour, in the sinner's heart, and in the church. Now, if men will seek the gift of God, not in the way of his ap