them into the other. The meanest enjoyment in heaven is to be preferred before the richest on earth, even then when the kingdom of Christ shall come in most beauty and glory.

Use 1. You that are engaged in the work of God, seek for a reward of your service in the service itself. Few of you may live to see that beauty and glory which perhaps you aim at as the end of all your great undertakings for God, whereinto you have been engaged. God will proceed his own pace, and calls on us to go along with him, and in the mean time, until the determinate end come, to wait in faith, and not make haste. Those whose minds are so fixed on, and swallowed up with some end (though good) which they have proposed to themselves, do seldom see good days, and serene in their own souls; they have bitterness, wrath, and trouble all their days; are still pressing to the end proposed, and commonly are dismissed from their station before it be attained. There is a sweetness, there is wages to be found in the work of God itself: men who have learned to hold communion with God in every work he calls them out unto, though they never see the main harvest they aim at in general, yet such will rest satisfied, and submit to the Lord's limitation of their time: they bear their own sheaves in their bosoms. Seeing God oftentimes dismisses his choicest servants, before they see, or taste of the main fruits of their endeavours; I see not upon what account consolation can be had in following the Lord in difficult dispensations, but only in that reward which every duty bringeth along with it, by communion with God in its performance. Make then this your aim, that in sincerity of heart, you do the work of God in your generation: find his presence with you, his Spirit guiding you, his love accepting you, in the Lord Christ, and whenever you receive your dismission, it will be rest and peace, in the mean time, you will not make haste.

Use 2. See a bottom and ground of consolation, when such eminent instruments as this departed worthy, are called off from their station when ready to enter upon the harvest of all their labours, watchings, toilings, and expense of blood. God hath better things for them in store, abiding things, that they shall not enjoy for a day or two, which is the best of what they could hope for here, had they lived to

see all their desires accomplished; but such as in the fulness whereof, they may lie down in peace to eternity. Why do we complain? for our own loss? is not the residue and fulness of the Spirit with him, who gave him his dismission? for his loss, he lived not to see Ireland in peace, but enjoys the glory of that eternal kingdom that was prepared for him before the foundation of the world, which is the condition held out in the third observation.

Observation III. The condition of a dismissed saint is a condition of rest, Go thy way until the end be; for thou shalt rest.'

The apostle gives it in as the issue of a discourse from a passage in the Psalms, There remaineth therefore a rest unto the people of God;' Heb. iv. 9. it remains, and is reserved for them, this the Lord hath solemnly proclaimed from heaven; Rev. xiv. 13. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth, yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them :' they go into a blessed condition of rest; there is not any notion under which the state of a dismissed saint is so frequently described as this' of rest,' which indeed is the proper end and tendency of all things; their happiness is their rest; their rest is all the happiness they can be partakers of: Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec veniat ad te.'

Now rest' holds out two things unto us: A freedom from what is opposite thereunto, wherein those that are at rest have been exercised, in reference whereunto they are said to be at rest; and something which suits them, and satisfies their nature in the condition wherein they are; and therefore they are at rest, which they could not be, were it not so with them; for nothing can rest, but in the full fruition and enjoyment of that which satiates the whole nature of it in all its extent and capacity. We must briefly inquire,

(1.) What it is that the saints are at rest from: and (2.) What it is that they are at rest in. Which I shall do very speedily.

(1.) The many particulars which they are at rest from may be referred unto two general heads: [1.] Sin; [2.] Labour and travail.

[1.] Sin; this, on all consideration whatever, is the main disquietness of the soul; temptations to it, actings in it, troubles for it, they are the very Egypt of the soul, its house and place of bondage and vexation; either the power of it indwelling, or the guilt of it pressing, are here still disquieting the soul. For the first, how doth Paul complain, lament, yea cry out concerning it; Rom. vii. 24. O wretched man that I am!' and what a sad, restless, and tumultuating condition upon this account doth he describe in the verses foregoing? The best, the wisest, the holiest of the saints on this account, are in a restless condition. Suppose a man a conqueror in every battle, in every combat that he is engaged in, yet whilst he hath any fighting, though he be never foiled, yet he hath not peace. Though the saints should have success in every engagement against sin, yet because it will still be rebelling, still be fighting, it will disturb their peace. So also doth the guilt of it; our

Saviour testifieth, that a sense of it will make a man to be 'weary and heavy laden;' Matt. xi. 28. This oftentimes makes the inhabitants of Zion say they are sick; for though an end be made of sin as to the guilt of it in the blood of Christ, yet by reason of our darkness, folly, and unbelief, and the hiding of the countenance of God, the conscience is oftentimes pressed with it, no less than if it lay indeed under the whole weight and burden of it.

I shall not instance in more particulars concerning this cause of want of rest, and disquietness; the perplexity of temptations, buffetings, and winnowings of Satan, allurements and affrightments of the world, darkness and sorrows of unbelief, and the like, do all set in against us upon this account.

This in general is the first thing that the dismissed saints are at rest from: they sin no more, they wound the Lord Jesus no more, they trouble their own souls no more, they grieve the Spirit no more, they dishonour the gospel no more, they are troubled no more with Satan's temptations without, no more with their own corruption within, but lie down in a constant enjoyment of one everlasting victory over sin, with all its attendants: saith the Spirit, 'They rest from their labours;' Rev. xiv. those labours which make them faint and weary, their contending with sin to the utter

most; they are no more cold in communion, they have not one thought that wanders off from God to eternity: they lose him no more, but always lie down in his bosom without the least possibility of disturbance. Even the very remembrance of sin is sweet unto them, when they see God infinitely exalted, and admired in the pardon thereof. They are free from trouble, and that both as to doing, and suffering few of the saints but are called out in one kind or another to both these. Every one is either doing for God, or suffering for God, some both do and suffer great things for him in either of them there is pain, weariness, travail, labour, trouble, sorrow, and anxiety of spirit ; neither is there any eminent doing or working for God, but is carried on with much suffering to the outward man.

What a life of labour and trouble did our deceased friend lead for many years in the flesh? how were his days consumed in travail? God calling him to his foot, and exercising him to understand the sweetness of that promise, that they that die in him, shall have rest: many spend their days deliciously, with so much contentment to the flesh, that it is impossible they should have any foretaste and sweet relish of their rest that is to come.

The apostle tells us that there remains a rest for the people of God; and yet withal, that they who believe are entered into that rest; those who in their labours, in their travails do take in the sweetness of that promise of rest, do even in their labour make an entrance thereinto.

[2.] They rest from all trouble and anxiety that attend them in their pilgrimage, either in doing or suffering for God. Heb. iv. 10. They enter into rest, and cease from their work;' God wipes all tears from their eyes, there is no more watching, no more fasting, no more wrestling, no more fighting, no more blood, no more sorrow, the ransomed of the Lord do return with everlasting joy on their heads, and sorrow and sighing fly away. There tyrants pretend no more title to their kingdom; rebels lie not in wait for their blood; they are no more awakened by the sound of the trumpet, nor the noise of the instruments of death: they fear not for their relations, they weep not for their friends, the Lamb is their temple, and God is all in all unto them. Yet,

(2.) This will not complete their rest, something farther is required thereto : even something to satisfy, everlastingly content, and fill them in the state and condition wherein they are. Free them in your thoughts from what you please, without this they are not at rest. This then you have in the second place, God is the rest of their souls; Psal. cxvi. Return to thy rest, O my soul.' Dismissed saints rest in the bosom of God, because in the fruition and enjoyment of him they are everlastingly satisfied, as having attained the utmost end whereto they were created, all the blessedness whereof they are capable. I could almost beg for liberty a little to expatiate in this meditation of the sweet, gracious, glorious, satisfied condition of a dismissed saint. But the time is spent, and therefore without holding out one drop of water to quench the feigned fire of purgatory, or drawing forth any thing to discover the vanity of their assertion, who affirm the soul to sleep, or to be nothing until the resurrection; or theirs who assigning to them a state of subsistence and perception, do yet exclude them from the fruition of God, without which there is no rest, until the end of all, with such other by-persuasions, as would disquiet the condition, or abridge the glory of those blessed souls, which yet were a facile undertaking, I shall draw towards a close.

There are three points yet remaining. I shall speak only to the first of them, and that as an use of the doctrine last proposed, and I have done.

Observation IV. There is an appointed determinate season, wherein all things and persons, according to the will of God, will run into their utmost issue and everlasting condition.

Thou art going, whoever thou art, into an abiding condition, and there is a lot appointed for thee, wherein lies an estate everlastingly unchangeable. It is the utmost end whereunto thou art designed, and when once thou art entered into that lot, thou art everlastingly engaged: no more change, no more alteration, if it be well with thee, it will abide; if otherwise, expect not any relief. In our few days we live for eternity, in our mutable estate we deal for an unchangeable condition. It is not thus only in respect of particulars, but God hath appointed a day, wherein he will judge all the world by the man whom he hath ordained.'