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AwimmimmommurSi
198
NEARNESS TO
GOD
[BERM.
xj.
his
love.
This
is
your
state,
and
this mine
by
nature:
These are
our
hateful and
deplorable circumstances, and
yet
we
go on to
aggravate our own
guilt,
to
run further
from God hourly, and
to make haste
to
everlasting
wretchedness,
if
divine
grace prevent
us
not.
III.
Reflection.
Is
nearness
to
God
the
foundation
of
the
creature's
felicity,
then
how
vain
are
all
pretences
to happiness,
while man
is
a
stranger
to
God
?
Let
him
be
surrounded
with
all
imaginable delights
of
sense,
or
let
him
be
furnished
with all
advantages
of
reason
or na-
tural
knowledge, to
entertain
the mind; yet
if
he
be
afar
off
from
God,
he
must
be
afar
off from blessedness.
Without
God and without
hope,
is
the
character of
the
sinful
world.
Do
the
'profane
and
sensual wretches
boast
of
their
pleasures,
while
God
is
not
in all
their
thoughts
?
Empty
shews
of
pleasure,
and
vain shadows
!
And
even these shadows, these vain flatteries,
are ever
flying
from
their embraces;
they delude
their pursuit
in
this
world,
and
shall vanish all
at
once
at
the moment
of
death, and
leave them in everlasting sorrow.
Let
the
sensualist
sport
himself
in
his own
deceivings,
and
bless
himself
in
the midst
of
his
madness
:
Let
the
rich worldling
say,
"
Soul
take thine
ease,
for thy
barns
and
thy chests
are
full."
Let
the mere
philosopher glory
that
he
has found happiness
out;
let
him busy
himself in
refined subtilties, and
swell
in the
pride
of
his
reason
:
let
all these
pretenders
to felicity,
compliment each
other,
if
they
please,
or
call themselves
the only happy
men
;
yet
the meanest,
and the
weakest
of
all
the saints,
would
not
make an exchange with
them;
for the
saint
is
brought
nigh
to
God
:
And
thongh
his poverty here
be
never
so
great, and
his
understanding
never
so
con
-
temptible,
yet
he
knows
this
great truth
well,
that
to
exchange
God
for the
creature,
would be
infinite
loss,
and
misery
unspeakable. They
who
never drew
near
to
God,
who
never
saw
God
in his works
or
his word, so as
to
love him above all things,
and
partake of
his love,
.must
be
miserable, in spite
of
all
their pretences:
They
that
are
far
from
God
shall perish,
Ps.
lxxiii. 27.
IV.
Reflection.
God
has
not utterly abandoned
this
world
to sin
and
misery, while he
keeps
his
word and
his ordinances
in
it:
For
these
are
his
appointed
means
of
approaching
to him,
and steps'whereby
we
may climb