severe discipline of a sorrowful repentance, if ever we mean to recover our natures again. But, for God's sake, consider, sirs, there is now no remedy for this, and you may thank yourselves for it; for you must undergo great difficulties, take which side you please. If you resolve to continue as you are, you must be most wretched slaves to your own lusts; you must tamely submit to all their most tyrannical commands, and run and go on every errand they send you; and though they countermand each other, and one sends you this way, and another the quite contrary; though sloth pulls you back, and ambition thrusts you forwards, and covetousness bids you save, and sensuality bids you spend; though pride bids you strut, and flattery bids you cringe, and there is as great a confusion in their wills and commands, as there was in the language of the bricklayers of Babel; and though, in such a huddle of inconsistencies, you are frequently at your wit's end, and know not what to do, yet you must be contented to endure the hurry; and if you cannot do all at once, you must do what you can; and when you have done so, it is a thousand to one but there will be as many of your lusts dissatisfied as satisfied: and in the mean time, while you are thus hurried about in the crowd of your own sinful desires, your wretched conscience will ever and anon be alarming you with its ill boding horrors, and griping and twinging you with many an uneasy reflection. Thus, like miserable galley-slaves, you must tug at the oar, work against wind and tide, and row through the storms and tempests of your own conscience; and all this to run yourselves upon a rock, and invade your own damnation. So that considering all, I dare say, the

toil of being wicked is much more insupportable than that of a holy life, and, which is sad to consider, it hath no other issue but eternal ruin: for the wages of sin, saith the apostle, is death, Rom. vi. 23. And methinks it should be very uncomfortable for a man to work so hard for nothing but misery, and even to earn his damnation with the sweat of his brows; especially considering that the toil and drudgery of a sinful life hath no end. For though custom and habit renders all other things easy, yet by accustoming ourselves to do evil, we add to our toil, and render those cruel taskmasters, our lusts, more tyrannical and imposing: for still the more we gratify them, the more craving they will be, and the more impatient of denial; and so by working for them, we shall but increase our own toil, and still acquire new degrees of labour and drudgery. But as for the main difficulty of religion, it chiefly lies în the entry to it for there we must shake hands with all our darling lusts, and bid them adieu for ever; and to persuade ourselves throughly to this, is the main difficulty of all: for then, to be sure, they will cling fastest about us, and use their utmost oratory to stagger our resolution; and the old love we have borne them, and the dear remembrance of the pleasures which they have administered to us, will make our hearts relent, and our bowels yearn towards them.

But if with all those mighty arguments wherewith our religion and our reason furnishes us, and all those divine assistances which we are encouraged to ask, and if we do, are assured to obtain, we can but conquer our reluctances, and heartily persuade ourselves to part with them, this is the sharpest brunt

in all our spiritual warfare: for now, if we do but keep the ground that we have gotten, and maintain our resolution against the temptations that assault it, our lusts will every day grow weaker and weaker; and that pleasure and ease, that tranquillity of mind, and peace of conscience, which we shall feel accrus ing to us out of the discharge of our duty, will by degrees so endear and connaturalize it to us, that at last it will be much harder for us to sin, than to obey Wherefore, let us stand no longer, like naked boys, shivering upon the brinks of religion, wishing that we were in, but afraid to venture; but let us consider seriously, resolve sincerely, and then leap in boldly; and though at first we may find it difficult to swim against the stream, and stem the tide of our own bad inclinations; yet, if we can but hold out courageously a while, we shall feel, the current slacken by degrees, till the tide of nature turn, and run the contrary way: and then we shall be car ried on with ease and delight, and swim cheerfully and pleasantly down with the stream. For when once we have conquered the bad inclinations of our nature, religion will be a mighty ease and refreshment to us; and we shall feel a thousand times more pleasure and satisfaction in it, than ever we did in all our sinful enjoyments: so that then we shall find the truth of the text, and be able to pronounce from our own experience, that God's commandments are not grievous.

DISCOURSE XIV.

UPON

PSALM CXIX. 68.

Thou art good, and thou doest good.

I HAVE been discoursing concerning the necessity of loving God, in order to our being truly religious; and shewed you at large that this is not only the great principle of all religion; but that, of all others, it is the most fruitful and operative. And now, that I may lay this foundation of true religion in you, I shall explain to you the infinite cause and reason that we have to love him. And because goodness is the beauty of a reasonable nature, and beauty is the object of love, I shall endeavour to demonstrate to you the infinite goodness of God, that I may thereby affect you with his beauty; and if possible, inflame all your souls with the love of him. And that I may the more fully convince you of the divine goodness, I shall endeavour to prove it from four distinct topics.

1. From the nature of God.

2. From the creation of God.

3. From the providence of God. And,

4. From the revelations he hath made to the world.

And these, I intend, shall be the arguments of four distinct discourses; the three first of which lie plainly in the text, Thou art good, and thou doest good.

Thou art good. That plainly denotes what God is in himself, that he is naturally and essentially good; that he is of a most loving, kind, and benevolent nature, and hath a most vehement propension to do good to others, founded in his immutable being. Thou doest good. That denotes the exercise and outgoing of this his essential benevolence in the works of his creation and providence; and that this his natural propension to do good is not at all sleepy or unactive; that it is not a lazy and restless woulding or volition; but that it always sallies forth into action, and doth most vigorously exercise itself, either in making of objects to employ itself about, or in upholding and governing them when they are made. So that the words contain these two things:

1. What God is in himself; Thou art good.

2. What he is in those actions that are determined without himself; Thou doest good.

1. I begin with the first of these, What God is in himself: Thou art good; i. e. Thou art so essentially, and according to the unalterable propension of thy nature. And this, as I told you, I shall in the first place endeavour to demonstrate from the nature of God; that is, from that entire complexion of all possible perfections whereof his nature is composed.

For in order to our handling of this argument, this must be premised, that God is a being endowed with all possible perfections, and consequently thereunto, that he is infinitely powerful and infinitely wise; and consequently to that, that he is infinitely happy; and consequently to this, that he loves himself infinitely and that all this is so, is very evident from the nature of the thing. For first, we must