The truly blessed man, or, The way to be happy here, and forever being…

1. When God is said to be found?

A. In respect of his Omnipresence it is every where. Act. 17. 27, 28. And with regard to his Providence, he fills all with his presence and influence, Psal. 135. 6. But it here aims at a gracious discovery which God makes of himself to us. We then find him, when we obtain favour from him in the thing we seek him for, when he is propitious to us, Deut. 4. 29. Gods being found is, opposed to his hiding himself; and his people account him to do so, when they receive no favourable returns of their Prayers, no gracious effects coming thereupon. ⟨p. 303⟩But when we ask his mercy, and he bestows it upon us, we conclude that we have found him. If when we are burdened with the Guilt of Sin, we humbly address him for pardon, and he applies the promise, and helps us to take hold on it, and witnesseth within us his accepting us, we conclude that we have found him: and so in every other respect in which his Children call upon him. It is he himself who comes in by his Spirit to the Soul, and leaveth those things there which testify his presence: Psal. 34. 4. I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me.

2. For the evidence, that he may be found. Sin indeed hath made an infinite distance between God and Sinners, and hath provoked him to hide from them. Every natural man is a lost Creature, hath lost his God, and his happiness, and knoweth not where to find him, but wandereth in a Wilderness where there is no way. But for all this, such is Gods rich Grace, that he hath discovered himself in the Gospel, so as that he may be found again by the lost Creature; and these things will evidence it.