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tude of his power over the soul, by exciting in it the most lively emotions of delight there his communications are proportional to the immortal nature of the glorified spirit. This was produced in the soul of our apostle.

"The pleasures which I have tasted," he seems to say, "are not such as your present faculties can reach. In order to make you comprehend what I have felt, I must be endowed with the power of creating new laws of the union subsisting between your soul and your body. I must be endowed with the capacity of suspending those of nature: or rather, I must be possessed of the means of tearing your soul asunder from that body. I must have the power of transporting you in an extasy, as I myself was. And considering the state in which you still are, I am persuaded that I shall represent to you what my feelings were much better, by telling you that they are things unspeakable, than by attempting a description of them. For when the point in question is to represent that which consists in lively and affecting sensations, there is no other method left, but actually to produce them in the breasts of the persons to whom you would make the communication. In order to produce them, faculties must be found, adapted to the reception of such sensations. But these faculties you do not as yet possess. It is therefore impossible that you should ever comprehend, while here below, what such sensations mean. And it is no more in my power to convey to you an idea of those which I have enjoyed, than it is to give the deaf an idea of sounds, or the blind man of colours."

You must be sensible then, my brethren, that defect in respect of faculties, prevents our conception of the sensible pleasures which the blessed above enjoy, as want of taste and want of genius prevent our comprehending what are their inclinations, and what is their illumination. Accordingly, the principle reason of St. Paul's silence, and of the silence of scripture in general, respecting the nature of the heavenly felicity, present nothing that ought to relax our ardour in the pursuit of it: they are proofs of its inconceivable greatness, and so far from sinking its value in our eyes, they manifestly enhance and aggrandize it. This is what we undertook to demon

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SERMON VIII.

The Rapture of St. Paul.

PART III.

2 COR. xii. 2, 3, 4.

I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whe

ther in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth ;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth ;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lanful for a man to utter.

We have endeavoured to elucidate the expressions of our apostle in the text, and to demonstrate that the silence of scripture, on the subject of a state of celestial felicity, suggests nothing that has a tendency to cool our ardour in the pursuit of it, but rather on the contrary, that this very veil which conceals the paradise of God from our eyes is, above all things, calculated to convey the most exalted ideas of it. We now proceed,

III. To conclude our discourse, by making some application of the subject.

Now if the testimony of an apostle, if the decisions of scripture, if the arguments which have been

used, if all this is deemed insufficient, and if, notwithstanding our acknowledged inability to describe the heavenly felicity, you should still insist on our attempting to convey some idea of it, it is in our power to present you with one trait of it, a trait of a singular kind, and which well deserves your most serious attention. It is a trait which immediately refers to the subject under discussion: I mean the ardent desire expressed by St. Paul to return to that felicity, from which the order of Providence forced him away, to replace him in the world.

Nothing can convey to us a more exalted idea of the transfiguration of Jesus Christ, than the effects which it produced on the soul of St. Peter. That apostle had scarcely enjoyed a glimpse of the Redeemer's glory on the holy mount, when behold he is transported at the sight. He has no longer a desire to descend from that mountain; he has no longer a desire to return to Jerusalem: he has forgotten every thing terrestrial, friends, relations, engagements: "Lord, is it good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles," Matt. xvii. 4. and to the extremity of old age he retains the impression of that heavenly vision, and exults in the recollection of it: "He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory; this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount," 2 Pet. i. 17, 18. The idea of the celestial felicity has made a similarly indelible impression on the mind of St. Paul.

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