APPENDIX. 55 6. Were love thus shed on the heart by the Holy Ghost, it would give me a livelier apprehension of the state of blessedness which all the faithful now enjoy : I should delightfully think of them as living in the joyful love of God, and ever fullyreplenished therewith. It pleaseth us to see the earth flourish in the spring, and to see how pleasantly the lambs, and otheryoung things will skip and play ; much more to see.societies of holy Christians lov- ing each other and provoking one another to delight in God. O, then, what a pleasant thought should it be, to think how all our deceased godly friends, and all that have so died since the crea- tion, are now together in a world Of divine, perfect love ! How they are all continually wrapped up in the love of God, and live iii 'the delight of perfect love to one another! . Omy-soul, when thou art with them, thou wilt dwell in love, and feast on love, and rest in love.; for thou wilt more fully dwell in God, and God in thee ; and thou wilt dwell with none but per- fect lovers : they would not silence thee from praising God in their assembly : tyrants, malignants, and persecutors, are more strange there (or far from thence) than toads, and snakes, and crocodiles are, from the bed or bedchamber of the king. Love is the air, the region, the world, they live in : love is their nature, their pulse, their breath, their constitution, their complexion, and their work: it is their life, and even themselves and all. Full loath would one ofthose spirits be to dwell again among blind Sodomites, and mad, self -damning malignants upon earth. 7. Yea, this effused love will teach us to gather the glory of the blessed from the common mercies of this life: doth God give his distracted, malignant enemies; health, wealth, plenty, pleasure, yea, lordships, dominions, crowns, and kingdoms; and bath he not much better for beloved, holy souls ! Yea, doth he give the brutes life, sense, delight, and beauty ; and bath he not better things for men ; for saints ? There are some so blind as to think that man shall have no bet- ter, hereafter, because brutes have not, but perish. But they know not how erroneously they think. The sensible souls of brutes are substance, and therefore are not annihilated at death ; but God put them under us, and made them for us, and us' more nearly for himself: Brutes have not faculties to know and love God, to meditate on him, or praise him, or, by moral agency, to obey his precepts :' they desire not any higher felicity than they have God will have us use their service, yea, their lives and flesh, to tell us they were made for us: He tells us not what he doth with them after death ; but whatever it is, it is not annihila- tion, and it is like' they are in , a state still of service unto man :
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