76 FLESH AND SPIRIT, &C. [sr.Rli. TV. tight is to last but threescore years and ten ; if thou overcome, there is the crown of life ready for thee, which Jesus the Judge shall bestow on all the conquerors. Remark VI. How should we rejoice in hope of that hour that shall release us from this sinful flesh ; when we shall serve God in spirit without a clog, without a tempter ! O with what a relish of sacred pleasure should a saint read those words, in 2 Cor. v. 8. Absent from the body, and present with the Lord ! Absent from this traitor, this vexing enemy, that we constantly carry about with us ! Absent from the clog and chai*of this sinful flesh, the prison wherein we are kept in darkness, and are confined from God ! Absent from these eyes that have drawn our souls afar from God bÿvarious temptations ! and absent from these ears by which we have been allured to transgression and defiling iniqui- ties ! Absent from those lusts and passions, from that fear and that hope, that pleasure and that pain, that love, that desire, and that anger, which are all carnal, and seated in the fleshly nature, and become the spring and occasion of so much sin to our souls in this state, Absentfrom the body, andpresent with the Lord : Me- thinks there is a heaven contained in the first part of these words, absent from the body; and a double hap- piness in the last, present with the Lord: present with him who bath saved our spirits through all the days of our christian conflict, and hath given us the final victory : Present with that God, who shall eternally influence us to all holiness, who shall for ever shine upon us with his own beams, and make us conformable to his own holy image : Present with that Lord and Saviour, from whom it shall not be in the power of all creatures to divert or draw us aside. It is by our flesh in this world that we arc a-kin to so many temptations, a -kin to all the objects that stand around us, to tempt us from Our God; and we are ready to cry out, " O the blessed angels that were never a-kin to flesh ! O those blessed spirits, who move swift as flames to execute the will of their God, :without the en- cumbrance of flesh, without being allured by that most powerful and successful tempter! Happy beings! they know not our toils; they feel them not; they are all spirit: they are all holy ! O the blessed saints in glory,
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