less perfection and delight of souls, that begins here, and is completed above. The happiness of glory is the perfection of holiness; that is the full beauty and loveliness of the spouse, the Lamb's wife.

Oh, how much are the multitudes of men to be pitied, that are hunting they know not what, still pursuing content, and it still flying before, and they at as great a distance as when they promised themselves to lay hold on it! It is strange what men are doing. Ephraim feedeth on the wind. The most serious designs of men are more foolish than the plays of children; all the difference is, that these are sourer and more sad trifles.*

Oh! that ye would turn this way, and not still lay out your money for that which is not bread, &c. You would find the saddest part of a spiritual course of life hath under it more true sweetness than all your empty mirths, that sound much, and are nothing, like the crackling of thorns under the pot. There is more joy in enduring a cross for God, than in the smiles of the world; in a private, despised affliction, without the name of suffering for his cause, or any thing in it like martyrdom, but only as coming from his hand, kissing it, and bearing it patiently, yea, gladly, for his sake, out of love to him, because it is his will so to try thee. What can come amiss to a soul thus composed?

I wish that even they who have renounced the vain world, and have the faces of their hearts turned Godwards, would learn more this happy life, and enjoy it more, not to hang so much upon sensible comforts, as to delight in obedience, and to wait for those at his pleasure, whether he gives much or little, any or none. Learn to be still finding the sweetness of his commands, which no outward or inward change can disrelish; rejoicing in the actings of that divine love within thee. Continue thy conflicts with sin, and though thou mayest at times be foiled, yet cry to him for help; and, getting up, redouble thy hatred of it,

* Tristes ineptiæ.

and attempts against it. Still stir this flame of God; that will overcome: Many waters cannot quench it. It is a renewed pleasure to be offering up thyself every day to God. Oh! the sweetest life in the world, to be crossing thyself, to please him; trampling on thy own will, to follow his.

SERMON IV.

HABAKKUK iii. 17, 18:

Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

Most men's industries and employments are most without them, but certainly our main and worthiest business lies within us; nor is ever a man fit for the varieties and vicissitudes of time and affairs without, till he have taken some pains to some good purpose within himself. A distempered, discomposed mind, is a limb out of joint, which is fit for no action, and moves both deformedly and painfully. That which we have to do, my brethren, for which these our meetings are commanded of God, and should be attended by us, and that we should follow out when we are gone from hence, is this-the reducing of our souls to God. Their disunion from him is their disjointing, and they are never right till they fix on him; and being there, they are so right that nothing can come wrong

to them. As they are not readily ensnared with ease and plenty, so neither lightly astonished with want and trouble; but, in the ebb of all other comforts, can hold the prophet's purpose-to joy in the Lord, and rejoice in the God of their salvation.

This we may hear and speak of, but truly few attain it. I fear many of us are not so much as seeking after it, and aspiring to it. A soul really conversant with God is taken up with him; all its affections work and move towards him, as the prophet's here; his fear, his joy, his trust, vers. 16-19. This is a prayer, as it is entitled, but it is both a prophetical and an unusual one; a prophecy and a song (as the word added imports) of Habakkuk the prophet, on Neginoth. The strain of it is high, and full of sudden raptures and changes, as that word signifies; as here, having expressed much fear in the foregoing words, a shivering, trembling horror, yet adds such a height of an invincible kind of joy; like the needle of the compass, fixedly looking towards him, yet not without a trembling motion. Thus, we have the temper of the Psalmist, rejoice with trembling; which suits well to so sublime an object; joying in God, because he is good, yet joy still mixed with holy awe, because he is great: and this especially in time of great judgments, or in the lively apprehensions or representations of them, whether before or after their infliction; whether they be on the people of God for their iniquities, or on the enemies of God for their oppressions and cruelties to his people, while he made them instruments for their correction. In both, God is formidable, and greatly to be feared, even by those that are nearest to him. This we find in the prophets' seeing judgment afar off, long before their day, which they had commission to denounce so this prophet here, not only discovers great awe and fear at what he saw and foretold concerning God's own people, the Jews, but at the afterreckoning with the Chaldeans, his and their enemies. When God comes to do judgment on the wicked, this will make them that stand by, and suffer not with

them, yet to tremble; yea, such as are advantaged by it, as usually the people of God are, their enemies' ruin proving their deliverance. The majesty and greatness of God, and terribleness of his march towards them, and seizing on them, as it is here highly set forth, this works an awful fear in the hearts of his own children. They cannot see their Father angry but it makes them quake, though it be not against them, but on their behalf. And this were our right temper, when we see or hear of the hand of God against wicked men, that run their own courses against all warningnot to entertain these things with carnal rejoicings and lightness of mind, or with boasting insultations; to applaud indeed the righteousness of God, and to give him his glory; but withal, to fear before him, though they were strangers, and no way a part of ourselves, and to have a humble sense of the Lord's dealing in it, (so Psalm lii. 6,) and to learn to reverence God; in all our ways to acknowledge him; to be sure to take him along with us, and to undertake nothing without him.

And this fear of judgments in others is the way not to feel them ourselves. When God sees that the sound of the rod on others' backs will humble a soul or a people, he will spare the stroke of it. They that have most of this holy fear of God's anger, fall least under the dint of it. Blessed is he that feareth always; but he that hardens his heart, shall fall into mischief. He that fears it not, shall fall into it; he that fears and trembles at it, shall escape: so the prophet here trusts for himself, I tremble in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble, ver. 16; and, upon his confidence, rises to this high resolution-Yet I will rejoice, &c.

The words, to make no other division of them, are a conjuncture of a sad supposition, and a cheerful position or purpose.

Although the fig-tree, &c. This is a thing that may come, and, possibly, which the prophet did foresee would come, amongst other judgments; and it is of all other outward scourges the sorest, most smarting, and

most sweeping; cuts off most people, and can least be suffered and shifted. It lieth amongst the rest in the store-house of divine judgments. He that furnished the earth, and gave being by the word of his mouth to all these things, hath still the sole, absolute power of them; they obey his word of command; and rightly looked upon, in our use of them, and the sweetness we find in them, lead us to him, as the spring of being and goodness. He is invisible in his nature; in his works most visible and legible: not only the spacious heavens and glorious lights in them, but the meanest things on earth-every plant and flower in their being and growing, yea, every blade of grass, declare God

to us.

And it is supernatural delight in natural things, to see and taste him in them. It is more pleasant than their natural relish it is the chief inner sweetness, the kernel and marrow of all; and they that take not the pains, and have not the skill to draw it forth, lose the far better half of their enjoyments, even of the things of this earth. To think how wise he is that devised such a frame, how powerful that made all these things, how rich he must be that still continues to furnish the earth with these varieties of provisions, how sweet must he be, whence all these things draw their sweetness! But, alas! we are brutish, and in our use of these things we differ little or nothing from the beasts. We are called to a higher life, but we live it not. Man is in honour, but he understands it not; he is as the beast that perishes. Now, because we acknowledge God so little in the use of these things, therefore he is put to it (so to speak) to teach us our lesson in the want and deprivation of them, which our dulness is more sensible of. We know things a great deal better by wanting them than by having them, and take more notice of that hand that hath power of them, when he withdraws, than when he bestows them.

Besides all other provocations and particular abuses of these things in intemperance and luxury, were it