A Body of Practical Divinity

Use 2. Let it be our great Care to enjoy God's sweet Presence here, which is the Beauty and Comfort of the Ordinance. Enjoying spiritual Communion with God, is a Riddle and Mystery to most People: every one that hangs about the Court doth not speak with the King. We may approach to God in Ordinances, and as it were hang about the Court of Heaven, yet not enjoy Communion with God; we may have the Letter without Spirit, the visible Sign without the invisible Grace: it is the enjoying of God in a Duty we should chiefly look at, Psal. 42.2. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. Alas, what are all our worldly Enjoyments without the enjoying of God? What is it to enjoy a great deal of Health, a brave Estate, and not to enjoy God: Job 30.28. I went mourning without the sun. So mayest thou say in the Enjoyment of all Creatures without God, I went mourning without the sun; I have the Star-light of outward Enjoyments, but I cannot enjoy God, I want the Sun of Righteousness, I went mourning without the sun. This should be our great Design, not only to have the Ordinances of God, but the God of the Ordinances. The enjoying God's sweet Presence with us here, is the most contented Life: he is an Hive of Sweetness, a Magazine of Riches, a Fountain of Delight, Psal. 36.8, 9. The higher the Lark flies the sweeter it sings: and the higher we fly by the Wing of Faith, the more of God we enjoy, the sweeter Delight we feel in our Souls: How is the Heart inflamed in Prayer and Meditation, what Joy and Peace in believing? Is it not comfortable being in Heaven? He that enjoys much of God in this Life, carries Heaven about him: O let this be the thing we are chiefly ambitious of, the enjoying of God in his Ordinances: remember, the enjoying God's sweet Presence here, is an Earnest of our enjoying him in Heaven:—and that brings me to the second thing, which is,

Use 2. Let it be our great Care to enjoy God's sweet Presence here, which is the Beauty and Comfort of the Ordinance. Enjoying spiritual Communion with God, is a Riddle and Mystery to most People: every one that hangs about the Court doth not speak with the King. We may approach to God in Ordinances, and as it were hang about the Court of Heaven, yet not enjoy Communion with God; we may have the Letter without Spirit, the visible Sign without the invisible Grace: it is the enjoying of God in a Duty we should chiefly look at,