bottles in the fmoak, when fet in the glorious presence of God, will be glorious both in foul and body. 2dly, The faints in heaven fhall have the full, enjoyment of God and of the Lamb.. This is it that perfectly fatisfies the rational creature; and here is the faints everlafting reft. This will make up all their wants, and fill the defires of their fouls, which after all hete obtained, ftill cry Give, give; not without fome anxiety, because tho' they do enjoy God, yet they do not enjoy him fully. As to the way and manner of this enjoyment, our Lord tells us, John xvii. 3. This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jefus Chrift whom thou haft fent. Now there are two ways, how a desirable object is known moft perfectly and fatisfyingly; the one is by fight, the other by experience: fight fatisfies the understanding, and experience fatishes the will. Accordingly one may fay, that the faints enjoy God and the Lamb in heaven, (1.) By an ̧ intuitive knowledge. (2.) By an experimental knowledge, both of them perfect; I mean, in respect of the capacity of the creature: for otherwife a creature's perfect knowledge of an iahnite Being is impofible. The faints below enjoy God, in that knowledge they have of him by report, from his holy word which they believe; they fee him likewife darkly in the glafs of ordinances, which do as it were reprefent the bridegroom's -picture or fhadow, while he is abfen: : they have alfo fome experimental knowledge of him, they tafte that God is good, and that the Lord is gracious. But the faints above shall not need a good report of the King, they fhall fee himself; therefore faith ceafeth they will behold his own face; therefore ordinances are no more: there is no need of a glass: they fhall drink, and drink abundantly of that whereof they have tafted; and fo hope ceaseth, for they are at the utmoft bounds of their defires. 16 1. The faints in heaven fhall enjoy God and the Lamb, by fight, and that in a most perfect manner, 1 Cor. xiii. 12. For now we fee through a glafs darkly; but then face to face.' Here our fight is but mediate, as by a glafs, in which we fee not things themfelves, but the image of things: but there we fhall have an immediate view of God and the Lamb. Here our knowledge is but obfcure; there it fhall be clear without the leaft mixture of darknefs. The Lord doth now converfe with his faints, through the lattices of ordinances; but then fhall they be in the prefence chamber with him. There is a vail now on the glorious face, as to us; but when we come to the upper, houfe; that vail through which fome rays of beauty are now dart t darted will be found entirely taken off; and then fhall glorious excellencies and perfections, not feen in him by mortals, be clearly difcovered, for we thall fee his face, Rev. xxii. 4. The phrafe feems to be borrowed from the honour put on fome in the courts of monarchs, to be attendants on the king's perfon. We read, Jer. liii. 25. of seven men of them that were (Heb. Seers of the king's face, i. e. as we read it) near the king's perfon. O unspeakable glory! the great King keeps his 'Court in heaven, and the faints fhall all be his courtiers, ever near the King's perfon, feeing his face. The throne of God, and of the Lamb fhall be in it, and his fervants fhall ferve him, and they fhall fee his face,' Rev. xxii. 3, 4. (1) They fhall fee Jefus Chrift with their bodily eyes, fince he we never lay afide the human nature. They will always behold that glorious bleffed body, which is perfonally united to the divine nature, and exalted far above principalities and powers, and every name that is named. There we will fee with our eyes, that very body which was born of Mary at Bethlehem, and crucified at Jerufalem betwixt two thieves; that bleffed head that was crowned with thorns; the face that was fpit upon; the hands and feet that were nailed to the cross, all fhining with unconceivable glory. The glory of the Man Chrift, will attract the eyes of all the faints, and he will be for ever admired in all them that believe, 2 Theff. i. 10. Were each star in the heavens fhining as the fun in its meridian brightnefs, and the light of the fun fo increafed, as the ftars in that cafe, fhould bear the fame proportion to the fan, in point of light, that they do now, it might poffibly be fome faint refemblance of the glory of the Man Chrift, in comparison with that of the faints for though the faints fhall fhine forth as the fun, yet not they, but the Lamb fhall be the light of the city. The wife men fell down and worshipped him, when they faw him a young child, with Mary his mother, in the house. But O! what a ravishing fight will it be to fee him in his kingdom, on his throne, at the Father's right hand! The Word was made flesh. (John i. 14.) and the glory of God shall shine through that flesh, and the joys of heaven fpring out from it unto the faints, who fhall fee and enjoy God in Chrift. For fince the union betwixt Chrift and the faints is never diffolved, but they continue his members for ever; and the members cannot draw their life but from their Head, feeing that which is not dependent on the head, as to vital influence, is no member: therefore Jefus Chrift will remain the everlasting bond of union Hh 2 be betwixt God and the faints, from whence their eternal life fhall fpring, John xvii. 2, 3. Thou haft given him power over all Afh, that he fhould give eternal life to as many as thou haft given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, &c.' Ver. 22, 23. And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.' Wherefore, the immediate enjoyment of God in heaven, is to be understood in respect of the laying afide of word and facraments, and fuch external means as we enjoy God by in this world; but not as if the faints fhould then caft off their dependance on their Head for vital influence : 'nay, the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne, fhall feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of waters,' Rev. vii. 17. . Now, when we fhall behold him who died for us, that we might live for evermore; whofe matchlefs love made him swim through the Red-fea of God's wrath, to make a path in the midst of it for us, by which we might pafs fafely to Canaan's land: then we will fee what a glorious one he was, who fuffered all this for us; what entertainment he had in the upper house, that hallelujahs of angels, could not hinder him from hearing the groans of a perifhing multitude on earth, and to come down for their help; and what a glory he laid afide for us. Then will we be more able to comprehend with all faints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and heighth, and to know the love of Chrift, which paffeth knowledge,' Eph. iii. 19. When the faints fhall remember that the waters of wrath he was plunged into, are the walls of falvation from whence they draw all their joy; that they have got the cup of falvation in exchange of the cup of wrath his Father gave him to drink, which his fialefs human nature fhivered at; how will their hearts leap within them, burn with feraphick love, like coals of juniper, and the arc's of heaven ring with their fongs of falvation ! The Jews celebrating the feaft of tabernacles, (which was the moft joyful of all their feafts, and lafted feven days) went once every day about the altar finging hosanna, with their myrtle, palm and willow branches in their hand, (the two former, figns of victory; the last, of chastity) in the mean time bending their boughs toward the altar. When the faints are prefented as a chafte virgin to Chrift, and as conquerors have got their palms in their hands, how joyfully will they compass the altar evermore, and fing their hofannas, or rather their hallelujahs, about 9, 10. it, bending their palms towards it, acknowledging themselves to owe all unto the Lamb that was flain, and redeemed them with his blood! And to this agrees what. John faw, Rev. vii. A great multitude-ftood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and they cried with a loud voice, faying falvation to our God which fitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. (2.) They fhall fee God, Matth. v. 8. They will be happy in feeing the Father, Son and Holy Ghoft (not with their bodily eyes, in respect of which God is invifible, 1 Tim. i. 17. but) with the eyes of their understanding being bleft with the most perfect, fall and clear knowledge of God and divine things, which the creature is capable of. This is called the beatifick vifion, and is the perfection of the understanding, the utmost term thereof. It is but an obfcure delineation of the glory of God, that mortals can have, on earth, a fight, as it were, of his .back. part, Exod. xxxiii. 23.. But there they will fee his face, Rev. xxii. 4. They fhall fee him in the fulnefs of his glory, and behold him fixedly :: whereas it is but a paffing view they can have of him here, Exod. xxxiv. 6. There is a vaft difference betwixt the fight of a king in his night-clothes, quickly paffing by us; and a fixed leifure vi view of him, fitting on his throne in his royal robes, his crown on his head, and his fceptre in his hand fuch a difference will there be between the greatest manifeftation of God, that ever a faint had on earth, and the difplay of his glory, that shall be seen in heaven. There the faints fhall eternally, without interruption, feed their eyes upon him, and be ever viewing his glorious perfections. And as their bodily eyes shall be ftrengthned and fitted to behold the glorious majefty of the Man Chrift, as eagles gaze on the fun without being blinded thereby, fo their minds fhall have fuch an elevation, as will fit them to fee God in his glory their capacities fhall be enlarged according to, the meafure in which he fhall be pleased to communicate himself unto them for their compleat happiness. This blissful fight of God, being quite above our prefent capacities, we must peeds be much in the dark about it. But it feems to be fomething elfe than the fight of that glory which we will fee with our bodily eyes in the faints, and in the Man Chrift, or any other fplendor or refulgence from the Godhead whatfoever; for no created thing can be our chief good and happiness,, nor fully fatisfy our fouls and it is plain that thefe things are fomewhat different from God himself. There Heh S fore fee face to face, and xiii. 12. And that fore I conceive that the fouls of the faints fhall fee God himtelf: fo the fcriptures teach us, that we fhall know even as we are known," I Cor. ⚫ we shall fee him as he is,' 1 John iii. 2. Howbeit the faints can never have an adequate conception of God; they cannot comprehend that which is infinite. They may touch the mountain, but cannot grafp it in their arms. They cannot with one glance of their eye, behold what grows on every fide: but the divine perfections will be an unbounded field, in which the glorified fhall walk eternally, feeing more and more of God; fince they can never come to the end of that which is infinite. They may bring their veffels to this ocean every moment, and fill them with new waters. What a ravishing fight would it be, to fee all the perfections and lovely qualities that are fcattered here and there among the creatures, gathered together into one but even fuch a fight would be infinitely below this blissful fight the faints hall have in heaven. For they fhall fee God, in whom all these perfections fhall eminently appear, with infinitely more, whereof there is no veftige to be found in the creature. In him fhall they lee every thing defirable, and nothing but what is defirable. Then fall they be perfectly fatisfied, as to the love of God towards them, which they are now ready to question on every turn. They will be no more fet to perfuade themfelves of it, by marks, figns, and teftimonies: they will have an intuitive knowledge of it. They fhall (with the profoundeft reverence be it fpoken) look into the heart of God, and there fee the love he bore to them from all eternity, and the love and good-will he will bear to them for evermore. The glorified fhall have a moft clear and distinct understanding of divine truths, far in bis light we fhall fee light, Pfal. xxxi. 9. The light of glory will be a compleat commentary on the Bible, and loofe all the hard and knotty queftions in divinity. There is no joy on earth comparable to that which arifeth from the difcovery of truth; no difcovery of truth comparable to the difcovery of fcriptores truth, made by the Spirit of the Lord unto the foul. I rejoice at thy word," fays the Pfalmift, as one that findeth great fpoil, Pfal. cxix. 162. Yet it is but an imperfect difcovery we have of it while here. How ravishing then will it be, to fee the opening of the whole treasure hid in that field! They fhall alfo be let into the understanding of the works of God. The beauty in the works of creation and providence will then he fet in a due light. Natural knowledge will be brought to per |