535 THE FIRST FRUITS OF' THE SPIRIT ; OR {DISC. X. sacred delight: and there may be some advances towards this pleasure found among saints below, some first fruits of this heavenly felicity and joy in the all-sufficiency of God. " My whole self, body and mind, is fromGod, and from him alone. All my limbs, and powers of flesh and spirit, were derived from him, and borrowed their first existence from their original pattern, in his fruitful mind. All that I have of life or comfort, of breath or being, with all my blessings round about me, is owing to his boundless and eternal fulness ; and all my long reaching hopes, and endless expectations, that stretch far into futurity, and an eternal world, are growing out of this same all- sufficient fullness. But what do I think or speak of so little a trifle as I ani ? Stretch thy thoughts, O my soul, through the lengths, and breadths, and depths of his creation, O. what an inconceivable fulness of being, glory, and ex- cellency is -found in God, the universal parent and spring of all ! What an inexhaustible ocean of being and litè, of perfection and blessednessmust our God be, who supplies all the infinite armies of his creatures in all his known and unknown dominions, with life and mo- tion, with breath and activity, with food and support, with satisfaction and delight ! Who maintains the vital powers and faculties of all the spirits which he hath made in all the visible and invisible worlds, in all his territo- ries of light, and peace, and joy, and in all the regions of darkness, punishment, and misery ! In him all things "live and move, and have their being," Acts xvii. 28. I-Ie withdraws his breath, and they'die," Psalrn civ. 29. Ile hath writ down all their names in his own mind, he gives them all their natures, and without him there is nothing, there can be nothing; all nature without hirn wotild have been a perpetual blank, an universal empti- ness, an everlasting void, and with one turn of his will, he could sink and' dissolve all nature into its original nothing. " Confess, O my soul, thy own nothingness in his presence, and with astonishing pleasure and worship, adore his fulness : He is thy everlasting all. Be thy de- pendence ever fixed upon him ; thou canst not, thou shalt not live a moment without him, without this ha- , 4
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