it finds a solitude and a dissatisfaction. The business we shall be put to in heaven, is for ever to praise and admire the great God for the infinite beauty of his holiness, and the glorious perfections of his nature; but this surely is an employment no ways either fit for, or desirable to a sinner. It is indeed a blessed thing "to see God," but it is so only to "the pure in heart;" for to the wicked and impure, the vision of God himself could not be beatifical. Those that live in any country must conform to the habit of the country. Those that are citizens of the new Jerusalem, must have the clothing and the garb of such citizens even the long "white robes" of a pure, unspotted righteousness. In a word, no hope can give us a title to heaven, but such an one as also gives us a fitness for it.

3. The third argument, by which the hope of heaven persuades the soul to purify itself, shall be drawn from the obligation of gratitude. For surely if I expect so great a gift at God's hands as eternal happiness, even humanity and reason cannot but constrain me to pay him at least a temporary, short obedience. For shall I hope to be saved by him, whom I strike at and defy? Or can I expect that he should own me in another world, when I reject, despise, and trample upon his commands in this?

God gives us righteous precepts, and endears them to us by glorious promises; and now, can it stand with the principles, not of piety only, but of common ingenuity, to balk the duty, and yet to snatch at the reward? to expect the highest favours from God's mercy, and to offer the greatest indignities to his holiness? When Christ had promised paradise to the thief upon the cross, would it not have been a prodigious piece of ingratitude for him to have joined with his fellow thief in cursing and reviling him, by whose favour he expected presently to exchange his cross for a crown?

God promises to us a kingdom, and makes the condition of our passage to it, only the "cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit." A work that is our privilege as well as our duty; and shall we not obey him in this one command? A command so reasonable for him to enjoin, and so advantageous for us to perform? For shall he be willing to make us glorious, and we grudge to make ourselves pure? Shall he hold forth such vast wages, and we not find in our hearts to set about the work? These things are absurd and disingenuous, and such as the world would cry out of in common conAnd therefore let no man think, that that disposition can commend him to God, that would justly make him abhorred by men. 4thly and lastly, The fourth argument, by

verse.

which the hope of heaven persuades the soul to purify itself, shall be taken from this consideration; that purity is the only thing that can evidence to us our right and interest in those glorious things that we profess ourselves to hope for. It is infinitely fond and presumptuous for a man to hope to inherit that estate, to which he can shew no title. The reasonableness of our hopes of heaven depends upon the sure right and claim that we have to it; and prove this we cannot in the court of our own conscience, much less in the court of heaven, but only by the obedience and purity of our lives, and their strict conformity to the excellent precepts of the gospel. No man can ascertain himself that he is an heir of glory, unless he can prove himself to be a son; and he shall never be able to find that he is a son, till holiness makes him like his heavenly Father; for where there is this relation, there will be also some resemblance.

And now, I suppose, that from what has been discoursed upon this subject, every one does, or at least may, gather a certain mark or criterion, by which to judge of his hopes and pretences as to the happiness of his future estate. It is grace only that ends in glory. And he that hopes for heaven in earnest, will be as active in his repentance as he is serious in his hopes. Who almost is there that does not own himself a candidate and an expectant of future glory, nay, even amongst those whose present “glory is only in their shame ?" But if such persons did not wretchedly prevaricate with themselves, how could there be so much of heaven in their hopes, and yet so little of it in their conversation? How comes their heart to be in one place, and their treasure in another?

It is evident that the very hope and religion of every profane and vicious liver is but mockery and pretence. For can any one of common senso really expect to be saved in the constant practice of those enormities, for which the God of truth himself assures him he shall be damned? It is infinitely vain for a man to talk of heaven while he trades for hell, or to look upwards while he lives downwards; yet thousands do so, and it is the common practice of the deluded world; which shews how much men trifle in the grand business of their eternal condition. They profess a hope of that, of which they have scarce a thought; and expect to enjoy God hereafter, though they live wholly without him here. But the issue will be accordingly; neither they nor their hopes can ever stand before the pure eyes of him, "with whom live only the spirits of just men made perfect."

To whom be rendered and ascribed, as is most due, all praise, might, majesty, and dominion, both now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON I.

'He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things."— EPHES, iv. 10.

Ir religion were not to bear only upon the unshakeable bottom of divine authority, but we might propose to ourselves in idea what could be fittest to answer and employ those faculties of man's mind that are capable of religious obligation, reason would contrive such a religion as should afford both sad and solemn objects to amuse and affect the pensive part of the soul, and also such glorious matter and bright representations as might feed its admiration, and entertain its more sprightly apprehensions: for the temper of all men in the world is either sad and composed, or joyful and serene; and even the same man will find that he is wholly acted, in the general tenor of his life, by the vicissitude and interchange of these dispositions.

Accordingly Christianity, in those great matters of fact upon which it is founded, happily complies with man's mind by this variety of its subject. For we have both the sorrows and the glories of Christianity, the depressions and the triumphs, the mournings and the hosannahs: we have the affecting sadnesses of Christ's fasting, his bloody agony, his crucifixion, and the bitter scene of his whole passion in its several parts and appendages on the other side, we gaze at his miracles, admire his transfiguration, joy at his supernatural resurrection, and (that which is the great complement and consummation of all) his glorious ascension.

The first sort of these naturally suit with the composed, fixed, and monastic disposition

of some minds, averse from all complacency and freedom; the second invite the joys of serener minds, happier constitutions, and brisker meditations.

Nay, such a divine chequer-work shall we find in the whole contexture of the story of our religion, that we have the light still with the advantage of the shade, and things exhibited with the recommending vicinity of their contraries; so that it is observed, that in the whole narrative of our Saviour's life, no passage is related of him low or weak, but it is immediately seconded, and as it were corrected by another high and miraculous.

No sooner was Christ humbled to a manger, but the contempt of the place was took off with the glory of the attendance, in the ministration of angels. His submission to that mean and coarse ceremony of circumcision was ennobled with the public attestation of Simeon concerning him; his fasting and temptation attended with another service of angels; his baptism with a glorious recognition by a voice from heaven. When he seemed to show weakness in seeking fruit upon that fig-tree that had none, he manifested his power by cursing it to deadness with a word. When he seemed to be overpowered at his attachments, he then exerted his mightiness, in causing his armed adversaries to fall backwards, and healing Malchus's ear with a touch. When he underwent the lash and violent infamy of crucifixion and death, then did the universal frame of nature give testimony to his divinity; the temple rending, the sun darkening, and the earth quaking, the whole creation seemed to sympathize with his passion. And when afterwards he seemed to be in the very kingdom and dominions of death, by descending into the grave, he quickly confuted the dishonour of that, by an astonishing resurrection, and by an argument

ex abundanti, proved the divinity of his person over and over, in an equally miraculous ascension.

Which great and crowning passage of all that went before it, however it is most true, and therefore most worthily to be assented to, yet still it affords scope for the nobler and higher actings of faith: for reason certainly would now very hardly be induced to believe that upon bare testimony and report, which even those who then saw it with their eyes, that is, with the greatest instruments of evidence, scarcely gave credit to.

For it is expressly remarked (Matt. xxviii. 17,) that of those who stood and beheld his ascension, though "some worshipped," yet "others doubted."

It seems things were not so clear as to answer all the objections of their eyes, or at least of their incredulity. But he ascended "in a cloud," as it is said; there was some darkness, something of mists and obscurity that did attend him. Yet a lively potent faith will scatter all such clouds, dispel such mists, conquer this and much greater difficulties which faith, since it must rest itself upon a divine word, such a word we have here; and that a full, a pregnant, and a satisfying word, which, from the pen of a person infallibly inspired, assures us, that "he who descended is the same also that ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things."

In the words we have these four things considerable :

I. Christ's humiliation intimated and implied in those words; "he that descended." II. His glorious advancement and exaltation; "he ascended far above all heavens." III. The qualification and state of his person in reference to both these conditions; he was the same. "He that descended is the same also that ascended."

IV. The end of his exaltation and ascen-sion; "that he might fill all things."

Of all which in their order. And when I shall have traversed each of these distinctly, I hope I shall have reached both the full sense of the text and the business of the day.

I. And first of all, for Christ's humiliation and descension. As every motion is bounded with two periods and terms, the one relinquished, the other to be acquired by it; so in Christ's descension we are to consider both the place from which it did commence, and the place to which it did proceed. The place from whence, we are told, was heaven.

But the difficulty is, how Christ could descend from thence: according to his divine nature he could not; for, as God, he filled the universe; and all motion supposes the mover to be sometimes out of the place to which he moves, and successively to acquire a presence to it; so that nothing that adequately fills a

place, can move in that place, unless it moves circularly; but progressively, or in a direct line, it is impossible. Whither then should the divine nature move where it is not prevented by its own ubiquity? whither should it go where it is not already? And as for Christ's human nature, that could not descend from heaven, forasmuch as it was not first in heaven, but received its first being and existence here upon earth.

This argumentation, we see, is clear and undeniable; how then shall we make out Christ's descension?

The Socinians, who allow Christ nothing but a human nature, affirm, that he is said to" descend from heaven" only in respect of the divinity of his original and production; as it is elsewhere said, that "every good and perfect gift descends from above," namely because it is derived from a divine principle. But his "descending" being here in the text opposed to his "ascending," clearly shews, that there is a farther and more literal meaning imported in the word.

I answer, therefore, that Christ descended according to his divine nature, not indeed by a proper and local motion, as the former arguments sufficiently demonstrate, but because it united itself to a nature here below; in respect of which union to an earthly nature, it might metaphorically be said to descend to the place where that nature did reside and thus much for the way and manner how Christ did descend.

We are now to direct our next inquiry to the place whither he descended; and for this we are to reflect an eye upon the former verse of this chapter, which tells us, that it was into the "lower parts of the earth ;" but what those "lower parts of the eartli" are, here lies the doubt, and here must be the explication.

There are several opinions to be passed through before we can come to the truth. I shall propose them all, that every one may be his own judge which of them carries in it the greatest probability.

1. Some understand it simply of the earth, as being the lowermost part of the world. But why then could not the apostle have said, that Christ descended tis rà xaтwτερα Tой xóoμov, and not rys, to the lower parts of the world, not of the earth? but to call the earth the lower part of itself, is an apparent violence to the naturalness of the expression, and indeed not more forced than ridiculous.

2. Some understand it of the grave, which is called the heart of the earth in Matt. xii. 40. "The Son of man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Now the heart or middle of the earth is the lowest part of it, forasmuch as every progression beyond that is an access nearer to heaven, which encloses and surrounds the