PART I. SERMONXI. lei and favour. The souls who enjoy this blessing are chosen to it, and by divine providence and mercy are caused to approach him. What further explicationof this phrase is necessary, will be sufficiently given in the following parts of the discourse. Let this then be the doctrine whichI shall attempt toconfirm and improve, viz. Doctrine. Nearness to God isthe foundationof a creature's happiness. This may be proved with ease, if we consider, what it is that makes an intelligent being happy : and how well such an approach to God furnishes, us with all the means of attaining it. The ingredients of happiness are these three : L The contem- plation of the most excellent object : 2. The love of the chiefest good : 3. And adelightful sense of being beloved by an all-suffi- cient power, or an almighty friend. 1. The contemplation of the most excellent object. And he who is nearest to God, has the fairest advantages of this kind. The understanding is a noble faculty of our natures ; truth is its proper food; and truth, in all the boundless varieties and beau- ties of it, is the object ofits pursuit, when it is refined from sensu- alities. This is the delight of thephilosopher, to search all the hid- den wonders of nature, and pursue truth with a most pleasur- able and restless fatigue : For this he climbs they heavens, traces the planetary and the starry worlds : For this he pries into the bowels of the earth, and sounds the depths of the ocean; and when, with immense toil of mind, he has found out some unknown natural truth, how are all the powers of his soul charmed within him, and he exults, as it were, in a' little paradise ! But the souls who are admittedto draw nearest to'God, con- template infinite truth in its original. They converse with that divine artificer, who spread abroad these curtains of heaven, who moulded this globe of earth, and furnished the upper and the lower worlds with all their admirable varieties. He is a God of glory and beauty in himself, as well as the authorofall the beau- ties of nature. All his perfections, as well as his works, yield heavenly matter for contemplation : He eminently contains in himself all the amazing scenes of nature, and the more trans- porting wonders of the worldof grace ; those myste s wherein he has abounded in all wisdom andprudence How the "vied sons of Adam were rescued from death, bythe Son of God dying in their stead; how Satanwas baffled in his most subtle designs, and the deepest policies of hell undermined, when the prince of VOL I. D[
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