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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
from
God,
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-
,
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