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cc out the Way to Felicity to us?" We must answer in the Pfalmift's Words, LORD, lift THOU up the Light of thy Countenance upon us.

What is Happiness but the Employment of the Faculties of our Souls upon fuitable Objects? How great then muft our Hope, how delightful our Profpect, or rather Anticipation of Happiness be, when our Underflandings are employed, (and we are affured they ever fhall be employed) in contemplating Him, who is infinite Truth; and our Affections in loving Him who is infinite Goodnefs! What a rational Scheme of Blifs have the Scriptures therefore marked out to us, when they tell us that, as to our Wills and Affections, Whom have we in Heaven but GOD? and there is none upon Earth that we should defire in Comparison with GOD. In Comparison, the Pfalmift fays, to intimate that we may love other Things fubordinately to Him. Our Flesh and our Heart may fail; but GOD is the Strength of our Heart, and our Portion for ever. And, in other Places, that we shall be filled with all the Fulness of GOD; and that we fall drink of His Pleasures as out of a River. And then, as to our Underfandings, that we shall know as we ourselves are known; that in GOD's Light we shall fee Light; and that we fhall Jee Him as He is. And how greatly (too greatly for our present

SER M.

VIII.

SERM. prefent far unequal Conceptions) will the VIII. Understanding be enlightened, when GOD shall shine forth immediately upon it, in the Fulness of His Glory, when we shall be as confcious of His enlivening Prefence as we are of our own Exiftence; as fenfible of His unerring Approbation, as we are of the Teftimony of our own Confciences!

O bleffed State, when I fhall behold Face to Face, or have a direct View of, what is infinitely lovely! love what I behold! and be made happy in the Enjoyment of what I love! the First and best of Beings; great and marvellous in His Works; juft and righteous in His Ways; but infinite and incomprehenfible in His Nature!

GOD hath styled himself Light: And as the whole material Creation would be involved in one black, horrid, and uncomfortable Gloom, if Light did not enliven it with it's Smiles, and beautify it with a rich Variety of Colours; fo would the fpiritual Creation live in an Eternal Blackness of Darkness, did not GOD lift up the Light of His Countenance upon it; brightening it with the Beams of His Truth, and chearing it with the Influence of His Favour.

In short, and to conclude: Earthly Objects may indeed fwell and puff up the Soul with unfubftantial Blifs; but Nothing can fill up every Void in the Mind, and fatisfy

VIII.

the whole Compass of our Defires with the SER M. Fulness of folid and unmingled Happiness, but that fupreme Good, who pervades every Part of Matter, fills infinite Space, and inhabits Eternity; That Being, who is above All, and through All, and in us All!

First and best of Beings! before whom ten Thousand Angels fiand, and ten Thoufand Times ten Thousand minifter unto Thee! Look down from that Variety of exalted Creatures; Angels, Arch-Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, approaching gradually nearer the Top of the Scale, but ftill at an infinite Distance from thy Perfections! Look down from Them upon Us, whom Thou haft made the loweft of accountable Beings

upon Us, who have made ourselves yet lower by our manifold Sins and Tranfgreffions. Imprint this Truth deep in Proportion to it's Value Man's fickly diftempered Soul, though it fhould for ever turn and shift from Side to Side in Search of Quiet, can reft in nothing but Thee, it's Pillar and Support here, in full Trust of the Fulness of Joy hereafter.

SERMON IX.

The Duty of honouring the KING founded on the Fear of GOD.

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Ift, How far these two Precepts delivered in the Text are connected.

IIdly, I fhall endeavour to enforce Obedience to the King. And then,

IIIdly, Make fome Reflexions fuitable to the prefent Solemnity.

These two Precepts, however diftinct and independent they may seem, have yet a close and infeparable Alliance. And indeed every Duty, whether of a Subject to his King, or of any one Man to another, must ultimately be refolved into the Will of GOD, into a Principle of Obedience

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IX.

to Him. This is the Bafis of Morality SER M. according to Scripture. The Love of GOD is there called the first and great Commandment, from which all the reft are deduced. We are commanded to be Holy because GOD is Holy. Whatsoever we do, we are to do it heartily, as unto the LORD, not unto Man. I grant that Things are not merely and folely good because GOD has commanded them, but that he has commanded them because they are good; and therefore there is a Fitness in Things antecedent to GOD's Command. What inclines GOD to command fuch Things is their natural Fitness, i. e. their Tendency to promote either the common Good, or our own: But what makes our Obfervance of them morally good is our chufing to act in Obedience to His Command. Set afide the Will of GOD, who will reward and punish us as we have done well or ill, and moral Virtue will only be fomething occafional; to be observed or neglected as it falls in with, or croffes, our favourite Interests; but it will never be a fixed, invariable Rule of Action upon all Occafions and Emergencies, that is, it will not be Virtue. For Virtue must be fomething fixed, and indifpenfable, and univerLally obligatory.

If the Will and Sanctions of GOD, and a future State, were left out of the Question,

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