d divine, the end is high too. It issues out of that
Fountain, and returns with the heart of man, to imbosom itself in that
again. And truly, this is the great excellency of true religion above all
those things you are busied about, that it elevates the spirit of a man to
God; that it will never rest till it have carried it above to the
Fountain-spirit. Our spirits are sparks and chips, to speak so with
reverence, of that divine Being; but now they are wholly immersed and sunk
into the flesh, and into the earth by sin, till grace come down and renew
them, and extract them out of that dunghill, and purify them. And then
they are, as in a state of violence, always striving to mount upwards,
till they be embodied, or rather inspirited, so to speak, in that original
Spirit, till they be wholly united to their own element, the divine
nature. You know Christ's prayer, John xvii. "That they may be one, as we
are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one,"
ver. 22, 23. Then spirits have attained their perfection, then will they
"rest from their labours," when they are one with him. This is the only
centre of spirits, in which they can rest immoveable. You find all the
desires and affections of the saints are as so many breathings upward,
pantings after union with him, and longings to be intimately present with
the Lord. Therefore a Christian is one after the Spirit, groaning to be
all spirit, to have the earthly house of this tabernacle dissolved, and to
be clothed upon with that house from heaven. He knows with Paul, that he
is not at home, though he be at home in the body, because the body is that
which separates from the Lord, which partition-wall he would willingly
have taken down, that his spirit might be at home, present with the Lord,
2 Cor. v. 1, &c. "Who knoweth (saith Solomon) the spirit of a man that
ascends upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the
earth?" Eccles. iii. 21. Truly, the natural motion of man's spirit should
be to ascend upward to God who gave it. When this frail and broken vessel
of the body is dissolved into the elements, the higher and purer nature
that lodged within it should fly upwards to heaven; even as the spirit of
the beasts, being but the prime and finer part of the body, not different
in nature from the earth, naturally falls down to the earth with the body,
and is dissolved into the elements. But I think, the consideration of that
woful disorder,