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themselves, and doubt of all their apprehensions, till overpowering objects and influences satisfy and fix them. For this my soul with daily longings doth seek to thee, my God and Father: O pardon the sin that forfeits grace : I am ready to say, ' Draw nearer to me;' but it is meeter to say, 'Open thou my eyes and heart, and remove all impediments, and undisposedness, that I may believe, and feel how near thou art, and hast been to me, while I perceived it not.'

XIII. It is God's love shed abroad on the heart by the Holy Ghost, which must make us "rejoice in hope of the glory of God:" this will do it, and without this it will not be done.

This would turn the fears of death into joyful hopes of future life. If my God will thus warm my heart with his love, it will have these following effects in this matter.

I. Love longeth for union, or nearness, and fruition; and it would make my soul long after God in glorious presence.

II. This would make it much easier to me to believe that there is certainly a future blessed life for souls; while I even tasted how God loveth them. It is no hard thing to believe that the sun will give light and heat, and revive the frozen earth nor that a father will show kindness to his son, or give him an inheritance. Why should it be hard to believe that God will glorify the souls whom he loveth, and that he will take them near himself; and that thus it shall be done to those whom he delights to honour ?

III. This effusion of divine love would answer my doubts of the pardon of sin: I should not find it hard to believe that love itself, which hath given us a Saviour, will forgive a soul that truly repenteth, and hates his sin, and giveth up himself to Christ for justification. It is hard to believe that a tyrant will forgive, but not that a father will pardon a returning prodigal

son.

IV. This effusion of divine love will answer my fears, which arise from mere weakness of grace and duty: indeed, it will give no other comfort to an unconverted soul, but that he may be accepted if he come to God by Christ, with true faith and repentance; and that this is possible. But it should be easy to believe, that a tender father will not kill or cast out a child for weakness, crying, or uncleanness: divine love will accept and cherish even weak faith, weak prayer, and weak obedience and patience, which are sincere.

V. This effused love would confute temptations that are

drawn from thy afflictions; and make thee believe that they are not so bad as flesh representeth them: it would understand that every son that God loveth he chasteneth, that he may not be condemned with the world, and that he may be partaker of his holiness, and the end may be the quiet fruit of righteousness; it would teach us to believe that God in very faithfulness doth afflict us; and that it is a good sign that the God of Love intendeth a better life for his beloved, when he trieth them with so many tribulations here: and though Lazarus be not saved for his suffering, it signified that God, who loved him, had a life of comfort for him, when he had his evil things on earth. When pangs are greatest, the birth is nearest.

VI. Were love thus shed on the heart by the Holy Ghost, it would give me a livelier apprehension of the state of blessedness which all the faithful now enjoy: I should delightfully think of them as living in the joyful love of God, and ever fully replenished therewith. It pleaseth us to see the earth flourish in the spring; and to see how pleasantly the lambs, and other young things, will skip and play: much more to see societies of holy Christians loving each other, and provoking one another to delight in God. O then what a pleasant thought should it be, to think how all our deceased, godly friends, and all that have so died since the creation, are now together in a world of divine, perfect love! How they are all continually wrapped up in the love of God, and live in the delight of perfect love to one another!

O my soul, when thou art with them, thou wilt dwell in love, and feast on love, and rest in love; for thou wilt more fully dwell in God, and God in thee: and thou wilt dwell with none but perfect lovers: they would not silence thee from praising God in their assembly: tyrants, malignants, and persecutors, are more strange there (or far from thence) than toads, and snakes, and crocodiles, are from the bed or bedchamber of the king. Love is the air, the region, the world, they live in love is their nature, their pulse, their breath, their constitution, their complexion, and their work: it is their life, and even themselves and all. Full loth would one of those spirits be to dwell again. among blind Sodomites, and mad, self-damning malignants upon earth.

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VII. Yea, this effused love will teach us to gather the glory of the blessed from the common mercies of this life: doth God give his distracted, malignant enemies, health, wealth, plenty

pleasure, yea, lordships, dominions, crowns, and kingdoms; and hath he not much better for beloved holy souls?

Yea, doth he give the brutes life, sense, delight, and beauty; and hath he not better things for men; for saints?

There are some so blind as to think that man shall have no better hereafter, because brutes have not, but perish. But they know not how erroneously they think. The sensible souls of brutes are substance, and therefore are not annihilated at death: but God put them under us, and made them for us, and us more nearly for himself. Brutes have not faculties to know and love God, to meditate on him, or praise him, or, by moral agency, to obey his precepts: they desire not any higher felicity than they have: God will have us use their service, yea, their lives and flesh, to tell us they were made for us. He tells us not what he doth with them after death: but whatever it is, it is not annihilation, and it is like they are in a state still of service unto man: whether united, or how individuate, we know not: nor yet whether those philosophers are in the right, that think that this earth is but a small image of the vast superior regions, where there are kingdoms answerable to these here, where the spirits of brutes are in the like subjection in aërial bodies, to those low, rational spirits that inhabit the aërial regions, as in flesh they were to man in flesh. But it is enough for us that God hath given us faculties to know, love, praise, and obey him, and trust him for glory, which he never gave to them, because they were not made for things so high. Every creature's faculties are suited to their use and ends.

And love tells me, that the blessed God, who giveth to brutes that life, health, and pleasure, which they are made and fitted for, will give his servants that heavenly delight in the fulness of his love and praise, and mutual, joyful love to one another, which nature fundamentally, and grace more immediately, hath made them fit for.

Blessed Jehovah! for what tastes of this effused love thou hast given me, my soul doth bless thee, with some degree of gratitude and joy and for those further measures which I want, and long for, and which my pained, languid state much needs, and would raise my joyful hopes of glory, I wait, I beg, from day to day. O give me now, at the door of heaven, some fuller taste of the heavenly felicity: shed more abroad upon my heart, by the Holy Ghost, that love of thine, which will draw up my longing soul to thee, rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.

THE

MOTHER'S CATECHISM;

OR,

A FAMILIAR WAY OF

CATECHISING OF CHILDREN,

IN THE

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, THEMSELVES, AND THE

HOLY SCRIPTURES.

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