Glory and praise be to thee, O Lord, which always causest us to triumph in Christ; who crownest us with loving kindness and tender mercies,' and hast not held us short of the best of thy favours. Truly, Lord, hadst thou given us but a mere being, as thou hast done to the lowest rank of thy creatures, it had been more than thou owest us, more than ever we could be able to requite to thy divine bounty; for every being is good, and the least degree of good is far above our worthiness. But, that to our being thou hast added life, it is yet a higher measure of thy mercy; for, certainly, of thy common favours, life is the most precious. Yet this is such a benefit as may be had and not perceived; for even the plants of the earth live and feel it not: that to our life, therefore, thou hast made a further accession of sense, it is yet a larger improvement of thy beneficence; for this faculty hath some power to manage life, and makes it capable to affect those means which may tend to the preservation of it, and to decline the contrary. But this is no other than the brute creatures enjoy equally with us, and some of them beyond us: that, therefore, to our sense thou hast blessed us with a further addition of reason, it is yet a higher pitch of munificence; for hereby we are men, and as such, are able to attain some knowledge of thee, our Creator, to observe the motions of the heavens, to search into the natures of our fellow-creatures, to pass judgment upon actions and events, and to transact these earthly affairs to our own best advantage. But, when all this is done, woe were to us, if we were but men! for our corrupted reason renders us, of all creatures, the most miserable: that, there fore, to our reason thou hast superadded faith, to our nature grace, and of men hast made us Christians, and to us, as such, hast given thy Christ, thy Spirit; and thereby made us, of enemies, sons and heirs, coheirs with Christ of thine eternal and most glorious kingdom of heaven; yea, hast incorporated us into thyself, and made us one spirit with thee our God;-Lord, what room can there be possibly, in these strait and narrow hearts of ours, for a due admiration of thy transcendent love and mercy? I am swallowed up, O God, I am willingly swallowed up, in this bottomless abyss of thine infinite love; and there let me dwell, in a perpetual ravishment of spirit, till, being freed from this clog of earth, and filled with the fulness of Christ, I shall be admitted to enjoy that which I cannot now reach to wonder at, thine incomprehensible bliss and glory which thou hast laid up in the highest heavens for them that love thee, in the blessed communion of all thy saints and angels, thy cherubim and seraphim, thrones, dominions, and principalities, and powers; in the beatifical presence of thee, the ever-living God, the eternal Father of spirits, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, One infinite Deity in Three, co-essentially, co-eternally, co-equally, glorious persons: to whom be blessing, honour, glory, and power, for ever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah. |