yourselves therefore immediately to shake off the Dominion of your finful Lufts, and to forfake your evil Ways, and your Doings that are not good. You must exert your own utmoft Endeavours, being fenfible that you muft either repent and be converted, or you must perifh; and you muft at the fame Time be earneft in your Prayers to God for the Influences and Affiftances of his Holy Spirit, that you may be enabled to make to youfelves new Hearts and new Spirits, and to put off the old Man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful Lufts, and to put on the new Man, which after God is created in Righteousness and true Holiness. Then fhall he take a divine Delight and Complacency in you, and shall rejoice over you to do you Good. For the righteous Lord loveth Righteouf nefs, his Countenance doth behold the upright.

On

On the Divine Happiness.

DISCOURSE XVIII.

I TIM. vi. 15.

Who is the bleed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

GR

REAT and worthy Conceptions of the Supreme Being lie at the Foundation of all Religion. And accordingly it is one great Excellency of the facred Writings, that they every where abound with the most just and admirable Defcriptions of the Deity, and of his incomparable Glory and Perfection, than which nothing can have a happier Tendency to engage us to adore and worship, to ferve and to obey him, and to fill us at once with an ar

dent

dent fuperlative Love to him, and with a profound Awe and Reverence of his infinite Majefty.

A remarkable Inftance of this we have in thefe Words of St. Paul, in which he represents God as the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, who only hath Immortality, dwelling in the Light which no Man can approach unto, whom no Man hath feen, or can fee; to whom be Honour and Power everlasting. Amen. What a grand and fublime Defcription of the Deity is this! It is the firft Part of it that I fhall now particularly confider, in which God is reprefented as the bleed and only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. There are two Things which are here plainly fignified, the divine Happiness, and the divine Dominion. The firft is fignified in the Character of blessed, which is here given. The fecond is fignified by his being called the only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

I fhall diftinctly confider each of these. ift, Let us confider the perfect Happinefs of the Supreme Being, which is fignified by the Epithet bleffed, by which he is here defcribed. In the New Teftament there are two Words ufed in the Original concerning God, both which are rendered

dered by our Tranflators bleed, though they differ in their Signification. The one is voyтos, and is the Word used, Rom. i. 25. where God is called bleed for ever; and Rom. ix. 5. and in feveral other Places. And this Word, in its proper original Meaning, has a Relation to the Praises afcribed to him by his intellectual Creatures, and fignifies, that to him all Bleffing and Praise belongs. The other Word which our Tranflators likewife render blessed, but which, to diftinguish it from the former, had better be rendered happy', is μanápros. And this is defigned, not fo much to fignify that he is worthy to be bleffed and praised by his Creatures, as to fignify his own effential Felicity, that he is most perfectly happy in himself. And this is the Word used in the Text. The firft Clause of the Verfe might therefore be properly rendered thus, the 'happy' and only Potentate.

Happiness is fo manifeftly included in the Idea of God, that all that have ever owned the Being of God, have regarded him as poffeffed of a perfect Felicity. Yet it will not be amifs to enquire a little into the Proofs and Evidences upon which this Principle is grounded; how it appears that God is infinitely happy, and what that Happiness is which be

2

longs

longs to him. This will tend to render that infinitely glorious Being very honourable and amiable in our Eyes, and to fill us with the highest Admiration of him, as well as to convince us how well fitted he is to make his Creatures happy, to be our fufficient Happiness as he is his

own.

ift, In general it appears, that God must needs be perfectly happy, if we confider that he has an abfolute Fulnefs of Perfection and Excellency in himself without any poffible Defect. The highest Idea we can form of the most compleat Felicity, is a full and abfolute Confluence of all poffible Excellency, Perfection, and Glory. The more excellent any Being is, and the fublimer and more enlarged its Faculties and Capacities are, its Happiness is of a fublimer and nobler Kind. Thus the Happinets of a Man, when he acts up to the true End of his Being, is greater and of a nobler Nature than that of a Brute, and of an Angel than that of a Man. And as God is infinitely more perfect than the higheft Angels, fo his Happiness is of as much an higher Kind as the Excellency of his Nature is fuperior to theirs, i. e. in an infinite Degree. The lowest Kind of Happiness is the fenfitive; above this rifes the rational and

human,