only by way of illustratory opposition: for, to speak more properly, this corrupt principle hath in it the central force of death and hell, and is always tumbling downward; whereas this divine principle is always climbing upward: but they agree in this, that they both seek their own gratifications, and study to acquire their respective perfections. The everlasting and most glorious enjoyment of God is certainly most perfective of the soul; and therefore is most properly and most deservingly said to be its "eternal life," according to that of our Saviour, John xvii. 3.

Now this eternal life is not a thing specifically different from religion, or the image of God, or the divine life, but indeed the greatest height, and the most possible perfection of itself: even as the sun at noon-day is not a light really distinct from what it was in the first dawnings of the morning, but a different degree, and far more glorious state; which seems to be the very similitude whereby the Spirit of God illustrateth the matter in hand, Prov. iv. 18, or, as a man of perfect age is not a distinct species from a child, but much more complete and excellent in that species; to which the apostle refers, treating of this subject, 1 Cor. xiii. 11. Man hath not two distinct kinds of happiness in the two distinct worlds, that he is made to live in; but one and the same thing in his blessedness in both, which, as I said before, must needs be the enjoyment of God. The translation made of

the text is very suitable to this notion; for this divine principle is said to spring up, not unto, but into everlasting life: it springs up till it be swallowed up into the perfect knowledge, love, and enjoyment of God. Even as youth is swallowed up in manhood, so this grace is swallowed up in glory, and not so much abolished, as indeed perfected.

By this phrase the genius of true religion, and the excellent temper of the truly religious soul, is most livelily described. This is the soul that, being in some measure delivered from its unnatural bondage, and freed from its unhappy confinement, now spreads itself in God, lifts up itself unto him, stretches itself upon him, is not content with a heaven merely to come, but brings down a heaven into itself, by carrying up itself unto, and after, the God of heaven. God is become great, only great, in the eye of such a Christian; he is indeed become all things to him: whilst this principle is rightly and actually predominant in him, he knows no interest but to thrive and grow great in God; no will, but to serve the will, and comply with the mind, of God; no end, but to be united to God; no business, but to display and reflect the glory and perfections of God upon the earth; the main business of this life, I say, is to serve him, the main ambition of his soul to be like unto him, and his main happiness in this world to be united to him, and, in the world to come, to be swallowed up in him; in this

world to know, love, delight in, and enjoy God above all things, and in the world to come to enjoy him more than so.

The gladsome growings up of the tender flowers unto the friendly sun, being once powerfully surprised with his precious and benign influences, and the cheerful haste with which the sympathetic needle pursues the attractive loadstone, being once rightly touched and affected with it, do a little, though but a little, resemble and represent the motions of a spirit impregnated with this divine principle, and strongly impressed with the image and stamp of God. Faith, hope, and love, are knitting and springing graces, and this eternal life is the end and perfection of them all; not that any one of them, I conceive, shall be utterly abolished, as some conclude concerning the two former, though without good ground, I think, from the apostle's words, 1 Cor. xiii. 13. But faith will be ripened into the most firm and undisturbed confidence, affiance, and acquiescence in God; hope will be advanced into a more cheerful, powerful, and confident expectation, having for its object the perpetuation of the soul's felicity; and love will become much more loving, and more clearly distinguishable from the imperfect longings and languishings of this present state, when it shall flower up into pure delights and complacencies, resting and glorying in the arms of its adequate, satisfactory, and eternal object. The faith of the hypocrite, and indeed his hope too, is still

springing up into self-preservation, deliverance, liberty, a splendid and pompous state of the church, (that is, of his own party,) or some such thing as will gratify the animal life, and there it terminates; but the faith of the sincere and religious soul springs up into eternal life; it knows no term but "the salvation of the soul," 1 Pet. i. 9. As its hope knows no accomplishment but a state of godlike purity and perfection, 1 John iii. 3. The mere natural man lives within himself, within a circle of his own, and cannot get out; whether he eat, or drink, or pray, or be zealous for the popular pulling down of the political antichrist, he is still in his own circle, he is still sacrificing in all this to the animal life, as I have already made evident: but the godly soul is divested of self, is still contriving the advancement of a nobler life within itself, and moving towards God as its supreme and all sufficient good.

Give a saint all that the whole world can afford, he cannot fix, nor settle, nor centre here: God hath put into him a holy restless appetite after a higher good, which he would rather be, than what he is. I know indeed that the soul that is thus divinely free may be hindered in its flight; but it will deliver itself from the clog at length: you may choke and dam up the streamings of this fountain perhaps, but they will burst out again; you may cast ashes upon this pure fire for a time, but it will flame out again: such a damp cannot arise, no, not from hell

itself, as to extinguish it. The Philistines I remember, stopped the wells of water which Abraham had digged in Gerar, and filled them with earth, Gen. xxvi. 15. But this well of water, which God diggeth in the holy and humble soul, cannot be stopped, neither by the devil, nor by any of his servants, but it will find vent upward: though you endeavour to fill it with earth, which indeed is the likeliest to choke it, though you cast the dust and gravel of earthly pleasures, profits, or preferments into it, yet it is a well of living water, and will work its passage out. The hungerings of the godly soul are not, cannot be satisfied, till it come to feed upon the hidden manna, nor its thirstings quenched, till it come to be swallowed up in the unbounded ocean of life and love.

The secondary and more improper notion of eternal life, I told you, was that which takes in the circumstances or appendices of it. And here we must needs allow, that the Holy Scriptures openly avouch some of these circumstances, as those especially of the first rank that I named, of some of which it seems to make great account; and possibly the Scripture may some where or other imply all the rest, even those of the inferior rank. Again, we will allow, that many of those phrases which the Scripture uses to describe the blessed state of the other world, principally respect these appendices of the soul's essential happiness: such perhaps are the "crown. of righteousness" mentioned by the apostle,