earth, and inure your spirits to tearing and torment before the time? Know your souls, and what is the felicity of them, and what you do, do in good earnest to attain it. You move as you love, Christ concluded that when the Jewish church slighted him. If you love darkness better than light you will never seek out for light, nor for that inheritance which lies there. If heaven were more absolute felicity, or more transcendent blessedness than it is, a heart pre-engaged and set upon another heaven, will slight heaven indeed your life lies upon this point, to look how, and where your love is pitched; where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be. If you make money only your treasure, you will only bend in good earnest after it. If you make not heaven your chief treasure, you will not seek after it heartily. Heaven has been shadowed out to you according to the metaphor in the text: is it now of any price in your eye? has it gained your love? It is a transcendent blessedness: are your hearts taken with it as such a blessedness? Till this I shall not look to prevail with soul to seek out after heaven to any purpose. any It was the art that Christ used, when he spake of eternal things, first to set out the excellency of them, to make that sparkle gloriously in the eye, to stir love, and then answerably come on to do good. am the bread which came down from heaven," &c. "I am the Bread of life," &c. "And he that shall drink of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst," &c. Many such expressions to take love you shall find in the scripture. What have we gained upon your love by all our discourse of heaven? If love be as it was, the man will be as he was; if heaven be at his door, he will step beside it into hell. "I Divine love is that flame which carries the soul upward; where this is not, heaven, though all, is nothing. There is darkness, and sitting in darkness; look to that, as you love your souls, it is excluding from the inheritance in light. Sit in darkness, love your lusts, and you will never part with them for heaven. The condition of your inheritance in light is, that you must cast away the unfruitful works of darkness; you will rather cast away your souls than do this, if your affection be impure. If your love to sin live, you will have your pleasure in it, though you die for it. If love to sin live, there is but one way with your souls; they will die in that sin. Love of sin, and heaven opened to the soul is rejection of Christ with his greatest blessing in his hand. Christ casts off every soul which thus desperately casts off him. A man must set his knife to the throat of an Isaac. Judge his soul in that which is dearest, if sinful. God will not else look towards a man with great things. "He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light." Job xxxiii. 27, 28. Consolation must conclude this point. Christians I am to give you a glad word in this sad time. Your inheritance here is spoiled, you have one that lies above spoil, in light. Can men or devils pull the sun out of heaven? then may your highest fortune be spoiled. You have one sun turned into blood, but you have another which cannot. Your felicity here is broken, and grows every day more broken: you have a felicity complete, full, absolute, as full of blessedness as the sun of light; a felicity as full of beams as the eyes of the soul can receive. Draw up your souls to heaven quickly, earth is posting away. Think how absolute you shall be above, and feed on that. Let England's misery make you cry, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;" set me as high and as happy as mine inheritance. IN LIGHT. That which by way of inference may be taken from this metaphor I shall but name, and conclude all; time and text. God doth lively shadow out to man here his condition hereafter; what he shall be, and where he shall be for eternity. There is death, and the shadow of it, before it come: so there is life, and the shadow of it; light is here made the shadow and resemblance of heaven, of a glorious estate to come. As there are tastes of the world to come, so there are sights. Light gives glimpses below, of the glory that is above. There is a beholding the land that is far off; the face of Christ in a glass; the glory above, by the glory here; one heaven in another; heaven in light. Man hath many sermons preached to him to make him heavenly, as many heavenly sermons as there are rays in the sun by every glimpse of light you should set before you heaven. As long as the sun shines you should not want a sermon to send your souls to heaven. God deals with flesh as flesh. Man is a creature taken with shadows; things drawn out to the life take. The soul now fetches in all from sense; God stoops to help in things this way, at such doors as they will go in at. God wraps up the higher heaven in the lower; glory in light, and so brings it down to carnal sense, and ennobles it there, to ennoble it within; catches the senses, to catch the heart, and save the soul. If light be so glorious, what is heaven! This is the secret soul-taking argument that is wrapt up in this metaphor. Though your bodies have yet no heaven, your souls, if you walk as you should, need never be without one. As long as your eyes are open to see the Sun, you may sweetly send your souls to heaven. Some swear by the light; this is to send their souls to hell, not to heaven, by the light. God moves in means powerfully; pictures are powerful upon flesh and blood. Make things glitter, and man will gaze; make earth glitter, although so base, and fallen man will be taken with it; work it up from its basenesses but so little, as to look golden and glorious, and man will dote upon it. How taking is golden earth to all the world! Heaven is wrapt up in sun-beams, and made to glitter, to catch a fool. Christ is expressed to us by the sun, to which he is compared; heaven by light, that if sense have any power upon the soul, no soul may go to hell whilst the Sun gives light. There were transient visions; now there are standing visions. Truth and the creature are God's standing vision. Things below are all made at divine pleasure to speak out things above. The word of God uses the works of God to shadow out what cannot be plainly seen here: invisible things are brought to understanding by visible; heaven by light; hell by darkness; hell beneath by hell here. The gnawing worm is used to shadow out gnawing conscience, to shadow out hell. Man hath his vision what shall be in things round about him. The word of God, the works of God; light, darkness, serpents, dragons, worms, lambs, doves, all creatures are used to give apt vision to man of things to come. |