d not his own life and spared
it not, to purchase this life to us. Let our thoughts and affections be
occupied about this high purchase of our Saviour's, which is freely
bestowed on them that will have it, and believe in him for it. If we be
not satisfied with such a low and wretched life as is in the body, he will
give a higher and more enduring life, and only worthy of that name.

Sermon XXX.

Verse 11.--"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the
dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall
also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you."

It is true the soul is incomparably better than the body, and he is only
worthy the name of a man and of a Christian who prefers this more
excellent part, and employs his study and time about it, and regards his
body only for the noble guest that lodges within it, and therefore it is
one of the prime consolations that Christianity affords, that it provides
chiefly for the happy estate of this immortal piece in man, which, truly,
were alone sufficient to draw our souls wholly after religion. Suppose the
body should never taste of the fruits of it, but die and rise no more, and
never be awaked out of its sleep, yet it were a sufficient ground of
engagement to godliness, that the life and well being of the far better
part in man is secured for eternity, which is infinitely more than all
things beside can truly promise us, or be able to perform. Certainly,
whatsoever else you give your hearts to, and spend your time upon, it
either will leave you in the midst of your days, and at your end you shall
be a fool, or you must leave it in the end of your days, and find
yourselves as much disappointed, or, to speak more properly, because when
your time is ending your life and being is but at its beginning, you must
bid an eternal adieu to all these things whereupon your hearts are set
when you are but beginning truly to be. But this is only the proper and
true good of the soul,--Christ in it,--most portable and easily carried
about with you, yea, that which makes the soul no burden to itself, and
helps it to carry all things easily,--and then most inseparable, for Christ
in the soul is the spring of a never-ending life, of peace, joy, and
contentation in the fountain of an infinite goodness, and it outwears time
and age as well as the immortal being of the soul. Yea, such is the
strength of this consolation, that t