towards him, converfing with him, that my text leads me to treat of, and I fhall not vary from it. In handling of which pofition, I fhall take this method.

1. Premise fome things needful to be known, concerning the fouls converfing with God: for Í fhall retain the word [converfing] throughout my difcourfe, as being a fingle, and yet a large and fignificant word.

2. Shew what it is for a foul to converfe with God; and how it comes to converse with him.

3. Prove the doctrine, that it is our duty to converfe with God in the way of his judgments. 4. Shew particularly, how we are to converfe with God in the time of afflictions.

5. Apply it.

1. I fhall premise fome things needful to be known, that tend to clear up my way to the following discourse.

1. I premife, That it is the great duty of men to converse with God. I have read that it was a common precept that the jewish doctors were wont to give to the people, that they should fingle our fome one commandment, and exercife them felves very diligently in the obfervation of it, that therein they might make God their friend, and make him a kind of amends for the breach of many others. I doubt it is a rule that too many profeffors live by, who not having the genuine and generous fpirit of true religion, do parcel out their obedience into fome little fhreds of homage and devotion; and instead of confecrating their whole lives to God, do content themselves with fome circumftantial and light obedience, and think themselves

themselves people of great attainments, if they do but feverely tie up themselves to hearing twice a week, and prayer twice a day, and a few other acts of more folemn worship. Certainly this is a penurious and needy fpirit, much unlike the generous, ample and free-born spirit of true religion. The duty, the whole duty, the conftant duty of man is to converse with God; commended in Enoch by the name of walking with God, Gen, v. 22. Where you may obferve of him, that he did not only fet out fairly with God, or take a turn or two with him, but he walked with him three hun- · dred years together. The fame God calls for from Abraham, under the fame name. Gen. xxii. 1. Walk before me, and be perfect. But it is not only the command of God that makes this a duty: if there had been no express commandment concerning it, yet were it the duty of every man, neceffarily flowing from his relation of a rea fonable creature. As man is a creature, so he muft needs live upon God; and as a reasonable creature, so he ought to live with him and unto him. Therefore hath God given unto man a noble rational foul, not only that he might talk and work, manage the creatures, and converse with the world; but that he might converse with the God of the world: that infinite, bleffed and glorious being. This is the very end of man's creation, as man, as a reafonable creature; this was the end of his being created in the image of God; and when he was fallen from this image, this was the end of his redemption by Chrift Jefus; that heaven and earth might be reconciled, and thofe that were far off might be brought nigh: fin is a finking the foul

down

down to felf and the creature; and redemption from fin is nothing else but the recovery of the foul into a state of favour and fellowship with God, So that whatever is expreffed by Faith and Repentance, is contained in this one word, converfe with God. It is the great, the neceflary, and as I may fay, the natural duty of the reasonable foul. 2.. It is the highest privilege of man. The prerogative of man above the beafts in his reafon; and the glory of reafon is, that it is capable of knowing, loving, enjoying, and converfing with the fupreme and infinite good. The privilege of reafon is not, as too many think, that it is capable of understanding arts and sciences: that it is capable of climbing up into the nature and courfe of the heavens, and diving into the fecret depths of the earth, and fea, and the creatures therein contained but in converfing with the infinite and glorious God. How miferable do vulgar fouls abufe this nobly faculty, who exercise it only in difcourfing, numbering, and ordering the poor concernments of the world and the body! yea, certainly thofe wife men, thofe Scribes, thofe difputers of this world, as the apoftle calls them, who cry up this faculty, and glory fo much in it, and yet do not exercise it about that high and eternal being, do not converse with God in pure affections, and God-like difpofitions and converfations, but expend those vaft treasures of reason upon fecrets in nature, fecrets in art, fecrets in ftate, or any other created being, do enthral their own fouls, which they fay are fo free-born, and captivate and confine that noble principle, which they themselves do fo much magnify; for fin is certainly the great and

only

of

only fhame and reproach an immortal foul: and indeed thefe men, though they put their fouls to fomewhat a more noble drudgery, yet are really no more happy than the vulgar fort, who fpend the strength of their fouls about eating and drinking, plowing, fowing, or keeping cattle. What difference, I pray you, in point of true happinefs, is there between boys playing with pins and points, and old mens hugging bags and lands? The nobleft fciences, the greateft commands, the moft enriching traffics are as very toys in comparison of true happiness, as the poor dunghil poffeffions of vulgar men: and the wife, the rich, the learned, the honourable of the world, that take up with employment in this world, and with a happiness in themselves, or in any creature, do as much difgrace their own fouls, and as truly live below their own faculties, as he doth, that knows no higher good than food and raiment, no higher employment than to toil all his days in a ditch. For indeed, as to all things but converfing with God, man seems to be but equal, perhaps inferior to the beafts that perifh. Doth man eat, drink, fleep, work? So do they. Doth man find any fenfual pleasure, which the beafts do not fenfate as well as he? Nay the gormandizing emperor envied the crane's long neck, and others have envied the more able and permanent lufts of the brute beafts, because themselves have been inferior to them therein; and have enjoyed lefs fenfual pleafure than they. If any glory in their knowledge of natural and political things; I could inftance in the ftrong memory, great fagacity, quick fancy, wonderful perceptions of many beafts, and

their

their ftrange knowledge of many fecrets which they never learned by books, no nor gathered gradually by obfervations. And as for man's communications of his notions by words and phrases, I doubt not to affirm, that there is fome thing like to be found in beafts and birds yea, that very beauty and flower of found, even mufic, which fome men magnify fo much, is more fairly and fweetly uttered by the filly bird that fits folitary upon a bough, than by the choirifters of the pope's cathedral. What foiled prerogative worth naming remains to man above his fellow-creatures, but his converfing with God, which we call religion, and is indeed reafon rectified, fanctified, exalted, and boiled up into its pure and primitive perfection! infomuch that I have fometimes thought, that I never heard a more reproachful word spoken concerning degenerate man, neither do I think that thing can be fpoken of him more fhameful and difhonourable, than what the apostle faith of the Heathen, Ephef. ii. 12. without God in the world. By converfing with God in the world, is man truly raised above the beafts, and the godly man above all other men. Nay, hereby is the godly foul advanced to the dignity and glory of the holy angels, or at leaft to a parity of happiness: for it is this that is their perfection and glory, as we find it defcribed in Matt. xviii. 10. They always behold the face of God. And therefore our bleffed Saviour doth affirm, that the faints in the refurrection, who fhall be raised above all creature-communion, to live upon God wholly, fingly, and entirely, fhall be equal to the angels of God, Luke xx. 36. In a word, this is the moft

real