a flux and emanation of his power and pleasure, and,
as the Psalmist expresseth it, He hides his face and they are troubled; he
takes away their breath, and they die, and return to their dust: He sends
forth his Spirit, and they are created, and he renews the face of the
earth, Psal. civ. 29, 30. You may extend this to the being and well-being,
the happiness and misery of creatures; our souls which animate our bodies
are but his breath which he breathed into the dust, and can retract when
he pleaseth; the life of our souls, the peace, and tranquillity, and
satisfaction is another breathing of his Spirit, and another look of his
countenance; and as he pleases to withdraw it, or interpose between his
face and us, so we live or die, are blessed or miserable. Our being or
well-being hath a more indispensable dependence on him, than the image in
the glass hath upon the living face.

If it be so then, certainly of all things in the world it concerns us
nearest how to please him, and to be at peace with him. If we be in good
terms with him in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways,
(Dan. v. 23.) upon whose countenance our misery or felicity hangs, then
certainly we are happy. If we please him, it matters not whom we
displease; for he alone hath absolute, uncontrolled, and universal power
over us, as our Saviour speaks, over both soul and body. We may expect
that his good pleasure towards us will not be satisfied, but in
communicating his fulness, and manifesting his favour to us, especially
since the goodness of God is so exundant,(190) as to overflow even to the
wicked world, and vent itself as out of super-abundance, in a river of
goodness throughout the whole earth. How much more will it run abundantly
towards them whom he is well pleased with. And therefore the Psalmist
cries out, as being already full in the very hope and expectation of it,
that he would burst, if he had not the vent of admiration and praise, O
how great is his goodness, and how excellent his loving-kindness laid up
for them that fear him! Psal. xxxii 19. and xxxvi. 7. But, on the other
hand, how incomparable is the misery of them who cannot please God! even
though they did both please themselves and all others for the present. To
be at odds with him in whom alone they can subsist, and without whose
favour is nothing but wretchedness and misery, O that must be the worst
and most cursed estate imaginable: to be in such a state, as do what they