3. We are to consider that no intention can sanctify an unholy or unlawful action. Saul the King disobeyed God's commandments, and spared the cattle of Amalek to reserve the best for sacrifice: and Saul the Pharisee persecuted the church of God with a design to do God service: and they that killed the Apostles had also good purposes, but they had unhallowed actions. When there is both truth in election and charity in the intention, when we go to God in ways of his own choosing or approving, then our eye is single, and our hands are clean, and our hearts are pure. But when a man does evil that good may come of it, or good to an evil purpose, that man does like him that rolls himself in thorns that he may sleep easily; he roasts himself in the fire that he may quench his thirst with his own sweat; he turns his face to the east, that he may go to bed with the sun. I end this with the saying of a wise Heathen: He is to be called evil, that is good only for his own sake. Regard not how full hands you bring to God, but how pure. Many cease from sin out of fear alone, not out of innocence or love of virtue, and they (as yet) are not to be called innocent but timorous.

SECT. III.

THE THIRD GENERAL INSTRUMENT OF HOLY LIVING; OR

The Practice of the Presence of God.

THAT God is present in all places, that he sees every action, hears all discourses, and understands

every thought, is no strange thing to a christian ear, who hath been taught this doctrine, not only by right reason and the consent of all the wise men in the world, but also by God himself in holy scripture. Am I a God at hand (saith the Lord) and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? (saith the Lord.) Do not I fill heaven and earth? (Jer. xxiii. 23. 24.) Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Heb. iv. 13.) For in him we live and move and have our being. (Acts xvii. 28.) God is wholly in every place, included in no place, not bound with cords, (except those of love,) not divided into parts nor changeable into several shapes, filling heaven and earth with his present power, and with his never absent nature. So St. Augustine expresses this article. So that we may imagine God to be as the air and the sea, and we all enclosed in his circle, wrapt up in the lap of his infinite nature, or as infants in the wombs of their pregnant mothers and we can no more be removed from the presence of God than from our own being.

Several Manners of the Divine Presence,

The presence of God is understood by us in several manners and to several purposes.

1. God is present by his essence, which because it is infinite cannot be contained within the limits of any place and because he is of an essential purity

and spiritual nature, he cannot be undervalued by being supposed present in the places of unnatural uncleanness: because as the sun reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its beams, so is God not dishonoured when we suppose him in every one of his creatures, and in every part of every one of them, and is still as unmixed with any unhandsome adherence, as is, the soul in the bowels of the body.

2. God is every where present by his power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with his hand, he fixes the earth with his foot, he guides all the creatures with his eye, and refreshes them with his influence: he makes the powers of hell to shake with his terrors, and binds the devils with his word, and throws them out with his command, and sends the angels on embassies with his decrees: he hardens the joints of infants, and confirms the bones when they are fashioned beneath secretly in the earth. He it is that assists at the numerous productions of fishes, and there is not one hollowness in the bottom of the sea, but he shews himself to be Lord of it, by sustaining there the creatures that come to dwell in it: and in the wilderness, the bittern and the stork, the dragon and the satyre, the unicorn and the elk live upon his provisions and revere his power, and feel the force of his Almightiness.

3. God is more specially present in some places by the several and more special manifestations of himself to extraordinary purposes, 1. By glory. Thus his seat is in Heaven; because there he sits encircled with all

:

the outward demonstrations of his glory, which he is pleased to shew to all the inhabitants of those his inward and secret courts. And thus they that die in the Lord may be properly said to be gone to God; with whom although they were before, yet now they enter into his courts, into the secret of his tabernacle, into the retinue and splendour of his glory. That is called walking with God, but this is dwelling, or being with him. I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, so said St. Paul. But this manner of the Divine Presence is reserved for the elect people of God, and for their portion in their country.

4. God is by grace and benediction specially present in holy places, and in the solemn assemblies of his servants. (Matt. xviii. 20. Heb. x. 25.) If holy people meet in grots and dens of the earth, when persecution or a public necessity disturbs the public order, circumstances, and convenience, God fails not to come thither to them; but God is also by the same or greater reason present there where they meet ordinarily, by order and public authority: there God is present ordinarily, i. e. at every such meeting. God will go out of his way to meet his saints, when themselves are forced out of their way of order by a sad necessity; but else God's usual way is to be present in those places where his servants are appointed ordinarily to meet. (1 Kings v. 9. Psal. cxxxviii. 1, 3.) But his presence there signifies nothing but a readiness to hear their prayers, to bless their persons, to accept their offices, and to like even the circumstances of

orderly and public meeting. For thither the prayers of consecration, the public authority separating it, and God's love of order, and the reasonable customs of religion, have in ordinary, and in a certain degree, fixed this manner of his presence; and he loves to have it so.

5. God is especially present in the hearts of his people by his Holy Spirit: and indeed the hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of things, and in type and shadow they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of his servants: there is his kingdom. The power of grace hath subdued all his enemies: there is his power. They serve him night and day, and give him thanks and praise; that is his glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the temple. The temple itself is the heart of man ; Christ is the High-Priest, who from thence sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling there, hath also consecrated it into a temple (1 Cor. iii. 16. 11 Cor. vi. 16.); and God dwells in our hearts by faith, and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by his purities: so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious trinity; and what is this short of heaven itself, but as infancy is short of manhood, and letters of words? The same state of life it is, but not the same age. It is heaven in a looking-glass, (dark but yet true) representing the beauties of the soul, and the graces of God, and No. 2.

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