Singers Hell's darknesse doth as well contribute to God's Glory as Heaven's Eternall Splendour As Shadows judiciously plac'd do no lesse praise the Painter than do the livelier and brighter Colours And as when the Earth doth send black noisome and sulphureous Exhalations up toward the Sky alas they reach not Heaven nor discompose the Spheres but all the Storms and Thunders they produce fall on that Globe they came from and there do all their mischief So the wicked may Wrong God indeed yet do they really Harm but themselves by all their greatest sins which trouble him chiefly but because they necessitate Him to punish them for the transgressions that do most Provoke God do him not the least harm An impious person may as Elihu lately inform'd us hurt a man as himself is not that supreamly blessed Deity the Result of whose Infinite Perfections is a resembling Happinesse which is as inseparable from Him as his Essence Our offences may derogate from his Accessionall Glory not from his Essentiall Faelicity or rather the most desperate Sinners by their greatest Crimes can but Change the Attribute they should bring honour to and but oppose the glorifying of his Goodnesse to occasion the glorifying of his Justice Since he will be infallibly glorify'd soon or late either by mens actions or their sufferings by their Practice of Duties or Punishment for Sinne. Thus you see how little God is beholden to you for your declining Hell Nor will the score be very much increas'd by your addresses and attempts for Heaven Can a man Job 22.2 3. sayes Eliphaz be profitable unto God as he that is wise may be profitable unto himselfe Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that thou art righteous or is it gain unto him that thou makest thy wayes perfect Congruously to which sense the Psalmist sayes Ps 16.2 My Goodnesse extendeth not to Thee The fire that we kindle on God's altars heats and enlightens Us but warms not Heaven at so distant a remove nor is wanted in the Sun's residence We have all the Redolence of the Perfumes and Incense we burn upon his Altars the Smoak doth Vanish ere it can reach the Sky and whilst t is undisperst but cloud 's and but Obscures it Alas our Best Performances are as uselesse Services to God as the Heir 's bringing Wax to his departing Father is to him which addes not any thing to the rich mans store and is by him desir'd and accepted onely to Sea◠away a Fortune to his Sonne Though therefore it be true that God is Pleas'd with our performances yet is that Welcome he vouchsafes to give them so far from enabling us by them to Requite his Love that it encreases the Unrequitednesse of it Since he is delighted with them as they afford him just Rises to reward them How far from Mercenary is then Gods Bounty since he accepts our Acknowledgments of his former blessings chiefly to make them Opportunities of conferring fresh ones as good old Isaac desir'd his Sons venison that from the rellishing of that savory meat he might take an opportunity to blesse him And § 15 to discover how disinteress'd God's Favours are let us further consider how little they are requitable for we can give Him nothing but his owne nor Heaven knows all that neither and both the Will and Power to serve Him are his upon so just and many Scores that we are unable to Retribute unlesse we do Restore and all the Duties we can pay our Maker are lesse properly Requitals than Restitutions When David and his Officers had offer'd towards the Structure of that Magnificent Temple which they seem'd Ambitious to make a Mansion inferiour to Heaven onely the King himself gave three thousand Talents of Gold and seven of refin'd Silver and the Heads of the People five Thousand Talents besides Ten Thousand Drachms of Gold ten Thousand Talents of Silver eighteen thousand of Brasse and a hundred thousand of Iron a Treasure of which I scarce remember to have read the like in any History besides a number of all manner of pretious Stones capable of impoverishing the very Indies They perfum'd this noble and unequal'd Offering with a solemn Confession which perhaps in God's esteem was much more pretious than It Thine O Lord saies the Royall Prophet in the name of all is the greatnesse and the power 1 Chro 29.11 1 13 14 1 16 and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in heaven and in earth is thine Thine is the Kingdom O Lord and thou art exalted as head above all Both riches and honour come of thee and thou reignest over all And in thine hand is power and might and in thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all Now therefore our God we thank thee and praise thy glorious Name But who am I and what is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort For all things come of thee and of thine own have we given thee For we are strangers before thee and soiourners as were all our fathers Our daies on earth are as a shadow and there is none abiding O Lord our God all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thy holy name commeth of thine hand and is all thine own Rom. 11.35 36. Who saies the Apostle in a Question that imports its own Negative hath first given to him and it shall be recompenced to him again For of him and through him and to him are all things Nay even our Love it self that poor-man's Surety and Exchequer that doth pay all his Debts by supplying him with the Prerogative to Coyne his Desires and Wishes of an Arbitrary value is here unable to discharge our Debts our Love is too much the Effect to be capable of being the Recompence of God's And surely 1 Joh. 4.10 the Divine Amorist had cause to say that herein is love not that we loved God but that he loved us And as the same Apostle elsewhere speaks We love him because he first loved us If 1 Joh. 4.19 in effect we look upon the unworthy Contest betwixt God's Mercies and most men's Ingratitude and but reflect upon the small Return of Love that the greatest Disbursments of His do usually bring home we cannot but acknowledge as David in the lately mentioned Scripture did that our loving God for his Favours is one of the greatest Favours that we love him for so Unrequitable is God's love and so Insolvent are we that that love vastly improves the Benefit by which alone we might have pretended to some ability of Retribution And so unlimited is this Impotence of ours to recompence or repay God's Dilection that it extends to and fetters our very Wishes For God enjoys an Affluence of Felicity so perfect and entire that even our Wishes can aime at nothing for him Worthy of him unlesse instructed by what he already actually Possesses And
the Sense of this same very Impotence to some of the greatest Proficients in Seraphick Love appears not the least uneasie Property of it It grieves us sensibly to see our selves reduc'd to be onely Passive and Receivers in this Commerce We would fain contribute Something and cannot alwaies refrain from devoting our Wishes to encrease His Happinesse to whom we owe all Ours And some Holy Persons particularly St. Austind have by the Exuberance of their Gratitude and Devotion been transported to make Wishes and use Expressions wherein their Affections had a greater share than their Reason and which argued them much better to apprehend How much God deserv'd of them than How little he needed them But upon second thoughts we shall find that the cause of our Grief ought to turn it into our Joy since the Desires we would frame aiming at God's being infinitely happy are all Fulfilled before they are Conceived and that in the most Advantagious and Noblest way For could God's happinesse admit Accession by our accomplisht Wishes there were then a possibility of his Wanting something to render it Compleat And sure 'T is a more Supream felicity to be by Nature transcendently above All encrease of Blessednesse than to receive the Greatest that men can wish To proceed now to the Constancy of Gods Love § 16 we cannot entertaine of God any Apprehensions not altogether unworthy of Him and criminally Injurious to him without believing That to think that he can be Inconstant is as great a Crime as 't were a Misery to find him so his Love is like his Essence immutably Eternall reaching from Everlasting to Everlasting it preceded the Nativity of Time and will survive its utmost Period and obsequies Having loved his own which were in the World Joh. 13.1 he loved them unto the end sayes the Evangelist and when St. James had told us That every good gift and every perfect gift is from above Jam. 1.17 and commeth down from the Father of Lights he adds to compleat our Consolation with whom is no variablenesse neither shadow of turning Of his own Will begat he us of the word of Truth and in effect since God takes the Motives of his Love to us from Himself not from Us the unchangablenesse of his Nature seems stroâ—gly to inferre that of his Charity and our Happinesse in it For I am the Lord I change not Mal. 3.6 therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed sayes God by the last of his prophets And in Jerem ah he tells his people I have lov'd thee with an everlasting Love And what God once said to the generous Josuah Josh 1.5 I will never leave thee nor forsake thee is by the Writer to the Hebrews applyed to believers in generall Heb 13.5 for the gifts and calling of God sayes the same Author elsewhere are without repentance Rom. 11.29 Nor do those Crosses that seem due to his Anger destroy the Immutability of his Love since ev'n that Anger is an Effect of it proceeding from a Fatherly Impatience of seeing a Spot unwip'd off in the Face he loves too well to suffer a blemish in it and from a Desire to see his Child an Object fit for a larger Measure of his Kindnesse as when we beat the dust out of a Suite we fancie we strike not out of Anger but onely to remove that which doth sully it and hinder us to take that delight in it which our fondnesse would be pleas'd with a just Cause to find As many as I love Rev. 3.19 I rebuke and chasten sayes our Saviour And I know Psal 119.75 O Lord sayes the Psalmist that thy Judgments are right and that thou in faithfulnesse hath afflicted me The Furnace of Affliction being meant but to Refine us from our earthly drossinesse and Soften us for the Impression of Gods own Stamp and Image The great and mercifull Architect of his Church whom not onely the Philosophers have styl'd but the Scripture it self calls Heb. 11.10 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an artist or Artificer imploys not on us the Hammer and the Chizzell with an intent to Wound or Mangle us but onely to Square and fashion our hard and stubborn Hearts into such living Stones 1 Pet. 2.5 as may both Grace and Strengthen his heavenly Structure Nor is God only thus Constant to his Love but to his Lovelinesse Our female Beauties are usually as fickle in their Faces as their Minds and more certainly in the former because though Casualties should spare them Age brings in a necessity of a Change nay a Decay leaving our doters upon Red and White incessantly perplext by the incertainty both of the Continuance of their Mistrisse's Kindnesse and of the lasting of her Beauty both which are necessary to the Amorist's Joys and quiet for sometimes when the Mistresse's humour doth not change so much as to prove guilty of the fault of Inconstancy her face alters enough to make her Lovers wish Inconstancy no fault Or that she had committed it that her Ficklenesse might afford them the Excuse of Imitation or Revenge But in Devotion we are equally secure from both these Dangers Since God nor doth desist from blessing us with his Love nor ceases ever from deserving the Heighth of ours Nor is he onely constant in making us the Objects of His Love but also in bending and inclining us to make him the Object of Ours so that he not only persists in continuing to us both the Offer and the Value of his Love but perseveres to give us a receptive Disposition to Welcome it to us and reflect it up to Him The want of this last mercy lost Adam Paradise and Satan Heaven there being to the Objects that must Secure our love such a Nature requisite in reference to our Affections as Philosophers are pleas'd to ascribe to the world's Center in relation to Heavy bodyes which they teach us that Magnetick poynt has the double Faculty not only to Draw thither but to Keep there for so Untoward and Crossegrain'd are we in poynt of our own Good and so unfit to procure and ready to desert our own Felicity that neither its Excellencie is a sufficient Motive to carry our addresses to it nor its possession a competent Tye to intercept in us all designs of Revolts and Divorces but we must be used as peevish Children are who on the one side when their mouths are out of taste and they refuse to take what is necessary for them must have it not only Offer'd them but Forc'd upon them and be as it were Made to receive it and who on the other side must be restrain'd from gadding when the Beauty of the Mansions they live in cannot invite their stay but they would gladly leave the proudest Pallaces Architecture can boast to Runne into the Street and Dabble in the Kennel All these three properties of Divine Constancy are not ill shadow'd in the operations of the Load-stone a Minerall
Wildernesse some of the pleasant and delicious Fruits of the blest Land of Promise I said Lindamor that Faith was the grand Condition required in God's free Grant of Eternall Life Not that I would ascribe any thing to a Lazy Speculative Barren Faith in opposition to that lively and active one which is called by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gal. 5.6 Faith operating by Love Jam. 2.26 since I am informed by St. James that the Divorce of Faith and Works is as Destructive to Religion as that of Soul and Body is to Life But that I was willing to mind you that though true Faith which cries like Rachel Give me children or else I die be ever the pregnant Mother of good Works Gen. 30. yet are not those Works the Cause but the Effects and Signes of God's first Love to us however afterwards the Children may Nurse their Parents As though the Needle 's pointing at the Poles be by being an Effect an Argument of its having been Invigorated by the Loadstone or received Influence from some other Magnetick Body yet is not that Respect unto the North the Cause but the Operation of the Iron 's being drawn by the attractive Minerall Thou art good Psal 119.68 and dost good saies the Psalmist to his Maker The Greatnesse of his Goodnesse is that which makes it Ours nor doth He do us good because that We are good but because He is liberally so as the Sun shines on Dunghills not out of any Invitation his beams find there but because it is his Nature to be diffusive of his Light yet with this difference that whereas the Sun's Bounty by being rather an Advantage to us than a Favour deserves our Joy and not our Thanks because his Visits are made designlesly and without any particular intention of addresse by such a bare Necessity of Nature as that which makes Springs flow out into Streams when their Beds are too narrow to contain the renewed water that doth incessantly swell the exuberant Sources God on the contrary for being Necessarily kind is not lesse Freely or Obligeingly so to you or me for though some kind of Communicativenesse be Essentiall to his Goodness yet his Extension of it without Himself and his Vouchsafeing it to this or that particular Person are purely Arbitrary To omit his Love to the numberlesse Elect Angells the strict Relations betwixt the persons of the Blessed Trinity supplying God with internall Objects which imploy'd his Kindnesse before the Creation and Himself being able to allow his Goodnesse the Extent of Infinity for its Diffusion But having glanc'd at this onely by the By we may yet further admiringly observe That whereas men usually give freeliest where they have not given before and make it both the Motive and the Excuse of their desistance from Giving any more That they have Given already Gods bounty hath a very different Method for he uses to give because he Hath given and that he May give Consonantly to which when the revolting Israelites had broken the Contents whilst Moses was bringing them the Tables of the LAVV and had thereby provok'd the Incens'd Given of it to thoughts of a sudden Extirpation of so ingratefull and rebellious a People we may observe That whereas God as unwilling to remember his former Goodnesse to them speaking to Moses calls them Thy People which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt Exod. 32.7 Moses on the other side to engage God to the new Mercy of a Pardon represents to God his former Mercy to them and calls them God's People which he brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power vers 11. and a mighty hand And so conspicuous in the Eternall Son was this Property of the Mercifull Father that when sick Lazarus's Sisters implored his Rescue for their exspiring Brother the Motive they imploy and which Prospered their addresses was Lord behold not Joh. 11.3 he who loveth thee but he whom thou lovest is sick And as he takes the first Inducements of his Bounty from Himself so do his former Favours both invite and give rates to his succeeding Blessings And there is reason for it for his pure love being all the Merit by which Man can pretend to the Effects of his Bounty it is but just that the degree of his Love should proportion those Favours which 't is our onely Title to and that God's Liberality should as well afford Measures as Motives to it self Nor is Gods love lesse Dis-interess'd § 14 than Free. His grand Designe upon us is but to make us Instruments and partakers of His Glory and to bring us to everlasting Happinesse by a Way that does as well elevate and dignifie our Nature as the Condition reserv'd for us will His Method of saving us if but comply'd with does here as the Apostle speaks Col 1.12 fit us for the Inheritance of the Saints in Light We being made as St. Peter speaks Partakers of the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1.4 having escap'd the corruption that is in the world through Lust So that these things wherein the noblest of the Philosophers plac'd their Faelicity serve but to Qualifie and Prepare Christians for that Higher Blessednesse that is reserv'd by God for those that love Him and cannot but be heighten'd and endear'd by the Value which Graces and Vertues had given men on Earth for such a Noble and Rationall kind of Happinesse as is apportion'd to them in Heaven What ends can he have upon us whose Goodnesse and his Blessednesse are both Infinite He was unconceivably Happy in his own Self-sufficiency before the Creatures had a Being and sure that felicity that needed not Themselves to be supream needs nothing that they can Do. Nor was it his Indigence that forc't him to make the World thereby to make new Acquisitions but his Goodnesse that prest him to manifest and to impart his Glory and the goods which he so over-flowingly abounds with Witness his Suspension of the World's Creation which certainly had had an earlier Date were the Deity capable of Want and the Creatures of Supplying it St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy styles God 1 Tim. 1.11 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate The Bessed God but may perhaps more properly be rendred The happy God and else-where in the same Epistle he truly cals him The Happy 1 Tim. 6.15 as well as Onely Potentate God sayes the Apostle That made the World and all Things therein Act. 27.24 25 28. seeing that He is Lord of Heaven and Earth dwelleth not c. As though He needed any thing seeing that He giveth to all Life and Breath and all Things And In Him we live and move and have our being And indeed so coherent in the mind of a mere Man that does but Consider and Understand the Import of his owne Notions is the beliefe of Gods Happinesse to that of His Beeing that I remember the Epicurean