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himself is in the happy Number of them? SERM.VI. To reflect, that He, who spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for our fakes, will with Him alfo freely give us all Things, muft beget in us a Delight in Him, of whom are all Things as He is our Creator, through whom are all Things as He is our Preferver, and to whom are all Things as He is our Final Happiness and Sovereign Good.

But this leads me from the Pleasures of Benevolence to confider Those of Hope and Expectation.

Now present Hope is prefent Good; and a certain Expectation of future Bleffings is in some Measure a Blessing in Hand. Hope is the great Cordial that must sweeten Life, and make the naufeous Draught go down. We are indigent Creatures, infufficient of ourselves for our own Happiness, and therefore ever seeking it fomewhere else. But, where to feek it? there is the Question. The thoughtful and penfive, who are Enemies to the Vanities of Life, are eaten up with (what is the greatest Vanity of all) a perpetual Vexation of Spirit; unless they direct their Thoughts to, and caft their Care

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SER. VIII. upon, GOD: No: If there were not another Life, our Bufinefs would be, not to alarm the thinking Faculty, but to lull our too too unquiet Thoughts to Reft. Our Mind would be, like a froward Child, ever crying and fretful whilft awake; and therefore to be played and lulled afleep as faft as poffible. And our main Happiness would be to fteal ourselves gently and infenfibly from a feeling of, or Reflection upon, our Mifery.

If Man had an ample Fund of Happiness within himself without any Deficiency; whence is it that he is continually looking out abroad for foreign Amusements? Amufements, which rather fufpend the Sense of Uneafinefs, than give any fubftantial Satisfaction; which keep the Soul in an even Poife between Pleafure and Pain, and are of no other Ufe but to make us infenfible of the Tedioufnefs of living, to fill up the vacant Spaces of Time, and to fhut out that importunate Intruder Self-reflection. Whence is it that That reftlefs Thing, the Soul, too enterprizing to trace every Thing, yea, the deep Things of GOD, is yet too cowardly to inquire into itself, and to view the

inward Workings of that ever-loved, yet SER. VIII. ever-avoided, Object, Itfelf? Whence is it that the Mind, whose active Energy prompts it to give a free and unconfined Range to her Thoughts on other Subjects; nay, to make, were that poffible, the Tour of the whole Univerfe, yet when she comes to dwell at Home, and to furvey the little World within, flags in her Vivacity, feels herself in a forlorn Condition, and finds a Drowfinefs and melancholy Gloom hanging upon her? Whence is it, but because the Soul, whenever it turns it's Thoughts inward, finds within itself a frightful Void of folid Happiness without any Poflibility of filling it up?

Indeed in a Circle of gay Follies, or in a Multiplicity of Bufinefs, when different Objects are in Succeffion continually striking upon the Mind, the Capacity of the Soul is taken up, and it forgets that inward Poverty and Indigence, which nothing can effectually relieve but the unfearchable Riches of the Love of GOD: But when we step afide from the Noife and beaten Tracks of Life into Solitude and Retirement, having no Employment to fix, no Recre

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SERM.VI. Recreation to diffipate, our Thoughts; we foon find that we are an infupportable Burden to ourselves without our GOD. Hence none is more miferable than a Man distracted with Variety of Business, excepting Him, who has no Bufinefs, no Amusement, at all. Recreations and Paftimes, properly fo called (for they serve for no other End but to pass away our Time) may footh the Mind into a pleafing Forgetfulness of it's Mifery. But Nothing can give us an exquifite Relish and Enjoyment of this Life but the Hopes of a better through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST. Should any Person afk then, "Who "will fhew us any Good? Who will point

out the Way to Felicity to us?" We must answer in the Pfalmift's Words, LORD, lift THOU up the Light of thy Countenance upon us.

What is Happiness but the Employment of the Faculties of our Souls upon fuitable Objects? How great then muft our Hope, how delightful our Profpect, or rather Anticipation of Happinefs be, when our Understandings are employed, (and we are affured

fured they ever shall be employed) in con- SER.VIII. templating Him who is infinite Truth; and our Affections in loving Him who is infinite Goodness! What a rational Scheme of Bliss have the Scriptures therefore marked out to us, when they tell us that, as to our Wills and Affections, Whom have we in Heaven but GOD? and there is none upon Earth that we should defire in Comparison with GOD. In Comparison, the Pfalmift fays, to intimate that we may love other Things fubordinately to Him. Our Flesh and our Heart may fail; but GOD is the Strength of our Heart, and our Portion for ever. And, in other Places, that we shall be filled with all the Fulness of GOD; and that we shall drink of His Pleasures as out of a River. And then, as to our UnderStandings, that we shall know as we ourselves are known; that in GOD's Light we shall fee Light; and that we shall fee Him as He is. And how greatly (too greatly for our present far unequal Conceptions) will the Understanding be enlightened, when GOD shall shine forth immediately upon it, in the Fulness of His Glory, when we shall be as conscious of His enlivening Prefence

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