the Holy Ghost exprefses his love in a fresh and most transcendent manner, viz. by filling the soul with eternal glory, and by leading it into such views, and into such a participation of God the Fa ther's love exprefsed in his antient, eter nal, and immutable acts of election, predestination, and acceptance in the per son of the Beloved, as fill the understanding with knowledge and enjoyment in effable. All the love of the Father and all the Grace of the Holy Spirit flow through the person of the God-Man into the soul; and thus it is filled with all the fulness of God. The Holy Spirit, as the spirit of glory, dwelling in and fully pofsefsing the disembodied soul, fills it inwardly through each and every faculty with unutterable and eternal glory. As heaven was prepared from the foundation of the world for the elect; so we find in the accounts given of saints both in the Old and New Testaments that they have all been prepared for this state, and most earnestly longed for the enjoyment of it. It is most exprefsly said of Old Testament-Saints, that at their death they were gathered to their people, viz. to the congregation above, the spirits of just men made perfect. After their death God is most exprefsly called their God, for this rea son, because they all live unto him, and

appear before him complete in the righte ousnefs of his Son, everlastingly pure through his most precious bloodshedding, adorned with all the graces of his Holy Spirit, and clothed upon with im mortality; their mortality being swal lowed up of life, and they now clothed upon with their house which is from heaven. It is further said of them, that they in their pilgrimage-state denied a better country than the land of Canaan, "That is, an heavenly, wherefore," says the Apostle, "God is not ashamed to "be called their God; for he hath pre"pared for them a city" In the name of all New Testament-Saints Paul saith, "We know that, if our earthly house "of this tabernacle were difsolved, we "have a building of God, an house not "made with hands, eternal in the hea"vens. We that are in this tabernacle "do groan being burdened: not for that "we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swal"lowed up of life"."

In pursuing this subject concerning the state and blefsednefs to which the believer is advanced when admitted to eternal glory, and in which the riches of glory will be made known on the vessels of mercy, it will be suitable and necefsary to speak briefly of the place

Heb. xi. 15, 16. -~ b2 Cor. v. 1—4.

where this will be, of the state itself, and then wherein this unspeakable blessedness may be conceived to consist.

For the place: it is Heaven. This is the habitation into which disembodied spirits are received immediately on their departure from their bodies, and where they exist and dwell. The original word heaven as made use of by Moses in the very beginning of Genesis signifies, as it is affirmed by the learned, both place and places;-an expansion, which places and keeps all things in their proper order and place. The Almighty and infinitely wise Architect ordained them. And this word is variously applied in the sacred page; viz. To the material, aerial, and visible heavens; to the place where God is said to dwell, styled The Heaven of e avens";-to the holy ones, i. e. the divine personalities in God;to angels'; and to the visible church on earth. But the subject, which is before us, concerns the place where Jehovah is pleased to manifest himself in the greatest display of his efsential nature, persons, and perfections, and in the richest communications of his love to his elect church consisting of angels and saints, where on this account he is said to dwell, and on no other; because Gen. i. 1, 41 Kings viii. 27. e Dan. iv. 26. f Job xv. 15. Rev. xii. 7-9.

Do

his efsence cannot be bounded. not I fill heaven and earth? saith JEHOVAH. Now this is called Heaven,the dwelling-place of the Most High. The prophet Isaiah addrefseth God thus, "Look down from heaven, and behold "from the habitation of thy holiness and "of thy glory. Thus the word heaven is in an especial manner given to the habitation of the Most High; where JEHOVAH in all the full blaze, lustre, majesty, and perfection of his deity, shines forth in the utmost display of his manifestative glory in the person of the God-man (in whom all the fulnefs of the Godhead dwelleth) on his elect church in Heaven. This is our general and common idea of heaven; and this very conception the scriptures give us warrant for. The apostle Paul speaks of the Third Heaven, as the place where God resides in all the glory of his ma jesty. And when Jesus sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, he is said to have been exalted above all heavens. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and enlightened life and immortality by the gospel, speaking of the habitation of the blefsed immediately after death, calls it Abraham's Bosom,-Everlasting Habitations, Paradise, His Father's House, in

Isa. lxiii. 15,

which are many mansions, sufficient for each and every one of his beloved ones, -The Kingdom of God,-The Kingdom of Heaven. sions may be conceived to be Old Testament Ones, sanctified by Christ's making use of them. From whence we learn, that being in Abraham's Bosom signified being with glorified patriarchs and prophets in Heaven. Sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God is exprefsive of this great truth, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets were on their dismifsion from this vale of tears joined to their believing predecessors, who were in Heaven before them. It being witnefsed of them, "These all died in faith"." Abraham's Bosom and sitting down with him in the kingdom of God are in the style of the New Testament paradise and everlasting habitations; which are expressive of Heaven as a place. It is called paradise in allusion to the earthly paradise, or garden of Eden, which was of God's planting, as the heavenly one is of God's providing and preparing. Christ's being carried up into Heaven, his being received up into Heaven, His passing into the Heavens, and His entering into Heaven itself to appear in the presence

Some of these expres

b. Heb. xi. 13...