A discourse relating to the much-lamented death and solemn funeral of our incomparable and…

And I doubt 'tis not enough considered how much the Felicity of the future State depends upon such Perfection of the Subject of it. Concerning the Object of Felicity, we are agreed it can be no other than the blessed God himself, the all-comprehending Good, fully adequate to the highest and most enlarged reasonable Desires. But the Contemperation of our Faculties to the holy, blissful Object, is so necessary to our satisfying Fruition, that without that we are no more capable thereof, than a Brute of the Festivities of a quaint Oration, or a Stone of the Relishes of the most pleasant Meats and Drinks. That Meetness which the Apostle speaks of Col. 1. 12. To be Partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light, is of no small Importance to our Participation, it self.

We are too apt to fill our Minds with Idea's of an Heaven made up of external, out-side Glories, forgetting we must have the Kingdom of God within us, hereafter, in its perfect, as well as here in its initial State. A Kingdom that consists in Righteousness, first, an universal holy Rectitude of all our Powers, then consequently in Peace and Joy.

The perfect Cure of all the Distempers of our Spirits, and a confirmed most perfectly happy Temper, is of most absolute Necessity to the Blessedness of the heavenly State; and without it any imagined external Glory will signify no more to our Satisfaction, than rich and gorgeous Apparel can give the desired Content and Ease to an ulcerous diseased Body; or (as the Moralist speaks) ¹a Diadem to an a king Head, a gay Slipper to a pained Foot, or a Gold Ring to a sore Finger.

1. 1Plutar.