to shame and humble him into poorness of spirit: he shall see how many flaws and defects there are in his choicest and most accurately performed duties; how many infirmities cleave to his warmest devotions, that the letter of the law would curse and condemn. And surely, upon a due survey of this, if he has but a spiritual sense of spiritual things, he cannot but loathe and despise his own righteousness, as a torn and ragged garment, utterly unable to cover the nakedness of his soul; and consequently think himself the most miserable person in the world, if there were no other righteousness for him to trust to. This therefore is a second way of obtaining this evangelical poorness of spirit; namely, for a man to compare himself and his actions with the high and absolute perfection of the divine law.

3. The third and last that I shall mention is, for a man to make a due and a spiritual use of all those afflictions and cross events, that the providence of God is pleased to bring him under; for every man shall assuredly have his share of these sooner or later, before he quits the world. And as the scripture says, affliction springs not out of the dust; though it may seem to us an accident, yet God does it by design: and what should he design by it, but to discipline and cure the soul by the adversity of the body? Though the subject-matter of most calamities is something temporal and external, yet the end of them is certainly spiritual; and this end can be no other, than by this means to bring us to a sight of our own wretchedness and great obnoxiousness to the anger of God, whensoever he shall be pleased to let it loose upon us. For such is the blindness and stupidity of man's heart, that while these outward

enjoyments flow in fast upon him, he never thinks of those things: spiritual pride and security drive all these thoughts out of his mind; and he cannot frame himself to a thorough practical and severe consideration of that woful and forlorn estate that he was born in, and that he lives and continues in, so long as ease and prosperity keeps him from feeling any of the penal effects of it: but he is cheerful, frolic, and gay, and, while he thrives in this world, questions not his happiness in the other.

But when a mighty blow from heaven strikes away all his comforts, and leaves him stript and naked, despised and trampled upon; then other thoughts naturally begin to take place; then the ministers of his outward man minister to him sad and misgiving reflections upon the condition of his inward, and make him doubt where the great calamity may end. For his heart must needs tell him, that affliction is but the consequent of sin, and that also such an one, as will determine where the worse and greater consequents of sin shall but begin: and then how unspeakably miserable would his lot be, should all these temporal hardships be but preludiums and beginnings of an intolerable weight of wrath reserved and treasured up for him hereafter. Every affliction carries in it many excellent instructions to a considering mind, when it humbles him under the feet of the insulting world, and covers him with contempt and scorn. It can tell him also, that sin makes him infinitely more contemptible and vile in the sight of God, who despises a wicked person more than the world can undervalue a man for his poverty, while it scoffs at his threadbare clothes and his empty purse. For God knows that the penury and bare

ness of a soul unjustified, and uncovered with the robe of Christ's righteousness, represents it more shameful than Job in his utmost misery appeared to be, when he sat naked and afflicted, full of noisome sores and ulcers, upon the dunghill, a mock to others, and a burden to himself.

When men feel the afflicting hand of God pressing them, there is also a voice from the same God, calling upon them to search for the cause of that grievance in their own sinful breasts; and, since they so much abhor the bitterness of the stream, to bethink themselves of the overflowing malignity of the fountain, and to hate and abhor that much more. For this is the only thing that God drives at: it is not so much the poverty of our purses, as of our spirits, that he regards; and if the former does not produce and occasion the latter, there is an affliction; that is, an opportunity of grace lost and misspent upon us. But he that will husband every temporal calamity to a spiritual advantage, will strike in with the divine methods, and being humbled by God, will humble himself yet further. Every judgment shall read him a lesson of himself, discover to him the vanity of his confidence, make him low and destitute in his own eyes, and so impoverish him into the best, the fullest, and the most abiding riches.

And thus I have finished the first general head proposed from the words; namely, the quality or disposition here recommended by our Saviour, which was poorness in spirit.

I shall now speak something briefly of the second; to wit, the ground or argument upon which this poorness of spirit is recommended; which is, that it entitles him that has it to the kingdom of heaven.

Christ never enjoins us any duty, though ever so irksome, so harsh, and so displeasing to flesh and blood, but still he makes it worth our pains to comply with him, even in those his severest and most unpleasant commands. For a man to loathe and despise himself, to whom nature has made self-love so delightful, and almost inseparable, must certainly be an hard lecture, and not easily learned, because so little liked; yet Christ invites us to it with no less a recompence than the gaining of a kingdom; he calls upon us to exchange an airy conceit for a substantial enjoyment, pride for glory, and opinion for possession. If to be poor is a frightful word, and such as carries but little allurement in it to persuade, yet surely a kingdom sounds big and high, and the kingdom of heaven yet higher; and this is that which is held out and offered to us, to reconcile us to the former. To be poor for a time is but an easy task, when the reward that follows it is to be rich for ever it is a duty that carries a blessing in its front, and is contrived into such words, that it exhibits the reward before it enjoins the work. Heaven is the first thing that it sets before us, and thereby seems not so much to exact, as to purchase our obedience. Upon which account, though there is required poorness of spirit in point of duty, I am sure there is requisite largeness of spirit to make us capable of the reward. Now in these words, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, two things are worthy of our remark.

1. The thing promised, the kingdom of heaven, which I conceive does not here precisely signify the future state of glory allotted for the saints in the other world; but that whole complex of blessings that is exhibited to mankind in the gospel, the eco

nomy of which is frequently styled by the evangelists, the kingdom of heaven. So that the meaning of the words is, that those great and glorious things that the gospel is big with, belong only to the humble, lowly, and full of the sense of their own unworthiness, as being the only proper and capable subjects of them. But now the gospel offers grace as well as glory; it gives the Spirit, with all its helps and assistances, to recover the soul of man to some measures of the divine image, worn out and defaced by original sin. There is a great deal of heaven that the gospel imparts to believers in this world, giving them the first-fruits of glory in the sanctification and justification of their persons, and those high privileges of sonship and adoption, by which they are repossessed of and reinstated in all those rights that had been forfeited by sin, and so come to have a new claim to what they enjoy here upon earth, as well as what they hope for in heaven; for they are the saints only to whom even these temporal blessings descend by covenant and filial relation to God; which the rest of mankind receive only as his vassals, by the liberality of a general and promiscuous providence.

2. The second thing to be remarked is, the manner in which heaven is here promised; which is in words importing the present. I shew indeed, that the future state of blessedness was not the only thing here intended, yet it is undoubtedly the principal; and Christ here conveys it to the saints in terms not expressing future, but actual possession: not theirs shall be, but theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They do not so much expect, as grasp it: it is not so much set before their hopes, as put into their hands, and