would have been perfectly needless and superfluous, that are now become absolutely necessary thereunto. For had we begun our progress towards heaven from a state of indifferency between virtue and vice, we had had no more to do but to practise those several virtues of religion, of which the heavenly life and state consists; to love and to contemplate, to adore and to obey God, and behave ourselves justly and charitably towards one another; all which would have been so easy, that we should have had no occasion of any instrumental duties to facilitate them to us. Whereas now starting heavenwards, as we generally do, from a most corrupt and degenerate state, there are sundry other means which we must use as instruments that are necessary to our acquiring and persevering in the virtues of the heavenly life; to our conquering the difficulties, and killing the vicious aversations of our natures against them: all which would have been needless, at least in a great measure, had not our nature been so depraved and corrupt as it is.

So that as the case now stands with us, there are two sorts of means that are necessary to our obtaining of heaven; the first is, the practice of those heavenly virtues, in the perfection whereof consists the state of heaven; the second is, the practice of certain instrumental duties, which are necessary to our acquiring those heavenly virtues, and overcoming the difficulties of them. The first sort of these are the proximate means, those which directly and immediately respect the great and ultimate end; the second, the more remote means, which immediately respect those means that immediately respect the end. The first is like the art of the builder,

which immediately respects the house; the second, like the art of the smith, which immediately respects the means and instruments of building.

I. One sort of means necessary to the obtaining of heaven, and that which more directly and immediately respects it, is the practice of those virtues in the perfection whereof the heavenly life consists. For we find by experience, that all heavenly virtues are to be acquired and perfected only by practice; that as all bad dispositions are acquired and improved into habits by bad practices and customs, so are all the contrary virtuous ones by the contrary practices. For religion proceeds in the methods of nature, and carries us on from the acts to the dispositions, and from the dispositions to the habits of virtue. And by the same method the divine grace which accompanies religion does ordinarily work its effects upon the spirits of men, not by an instantaneous infusion of virtuous habits into the will, but by persuading them to the practice of those virtues that are contrary to their vicious habits, and to persist in the practice of them till they have mortified those habits, and throughly habituated and inured themselves to these. So that the grace of God is like a graff, which though it is put into a stock which is quite of another kind, doth yet make use of the faculties and juices of the stock, and so by cooperating with them converts it by degrees into its own nature. And this is exactly agreeable to the common experience of men, who, in the beginning of their reformation, are so far from acting virtuously from habit and inclination, that it goes against the very grain of their nature, and they would much rather return to their vicious courses, if they were

not chased and pursued by the terrors of an awakened conscience; and when afterwards they come to act upon a more ingenuous principle, yet still they find in themselves a great averseness and reluctancy to it, and it is a great while usually ere they arrive to a habit or facility of acting virtuously. But then by perseverance in the practice of virtue, they are more and more inclined and disposed to it, and so by degrees it becomes easy and natural to them. If therefore we would ever arrive to that perfection of virtue which the heavenly state implies, it must be by the practice of virtue, by a continual training and exercising ourselves in all the parts of the hea*venly life, which, by degrees, will wear off the dif ficulty of it, and adapt and familiarize our nature to it. Α γὰρ δεῖ μανθάνοντας ποιεῖν, ταῦτα ποιοῦντες μανθάνο"Those things which they that learn ought to "do, they learn by doing them." Thus we learn devotion by prayer, submission to God by denying ourselves, charity by giving alms, and meekness by forgiving injuries. And we may as reasonably expect to commence learned without study, as virtuous without the practice of virtue. Since therefore the formal happiness of our reasonable natures consists in the perfection of all the heavenly virtues, and it is by these alone that we can relish and enjoy the blissful objects of heaven; it hence follows, that the practice of those virtues is the most direct and immediate means to obtain the blessed end of our religion. But then,

μεν.

II. Another sort of means necessary to our obtaining of heaven consists of certain instrumental duties, by which we are to acquire, improve, and perfect these heavenly virtues. What these means

are, will be hereafter largely shewn: all that I shall say of them at present is, that they are such as are no farther good and useful, than as they are the means of heavenly virtue, and do tend towards the acquiring, improving, and perfecting it. For the whole duty of man may be distributed into these two generals, viz. the religion of the end and the religion of the means. The religion of the end contains all that heavenly virtue wherein the perfection and happiness of human nature consists; and this the apostle distributes into three particulars, viz. sobriety, righteousness, and godliness. The religion of the means comprehends all that duty which does either naturally or by institution respect and drive at this religion of the end; and that all other duty, that is not itself a natural branch and part of it, doth respect and drive at it, the apostle assures us, when he tells us, that the gospel, or grace of God, was revealed from heaven for this very purpose, to teach us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present world. And if we do not use the religion of the means to this purpose, it is altogether useless and insignificant. For the purpose of all religious duties is either,

or,

1. To reconcile men to God, and God to them;

2. To perfect the human nature; or,

3. To entitle men to heaven; or,

4. To qualify and dispose them for the heavenly life. To neither of which the religion of the means is any farther useful, than as it produces and promotes in us those heavenly virtues which are implied in the religion of the end. For,

I. It is no further useful towards the reconciling us to God, and God to us. For there can be no hearty reconciliation between adverse parties, without there be a mutual likeness and agreement of natures. Now the carnal mind, (which includes all that is repugnant to the heavenly virtues,) the apostle tells us, is enmity against God, Rom. viii. 7. that is, hath a natural antipathy to the purity and goodness of the divine nature. And this antipathy, the same apostle tells us, is founded in our wicked works, Coloss. i. 21. So that though we should practise never so diligently all that is contained in the religion of the means, though we should pray, and hear, and receive sacraments, &c. with never so much zeal and constancy; yet all this will be insignificant, as to the reconciling our natures to God, unless it destroy in us that carnal mind and those wicked works which render us so averse to his goodness. And though God bears a hearty good-will to all that are capable of good, and embraces his whole creation with the outstretched arms of his benevolence; yet he cannot be supposed to be pleased with or delighted in any, but.such as resemble him in those amiable graces of purity and goodness for which he loves himself. For he loves not himself merely because he is himself, (which would be a blind instinct, rather than a reasonable love,) but because he is good; and he loves himself above all other things, because he knows himself to be the highest and most perfect good and consequently he loves all other things proportionably as they approach and resemble him in goodness. And indeed, if he loved us for any other reason besides that for which he loves himself, he would not have infinite reason to love