self, in which society there is a
fulness of joy,--then how should we receive it with open hearts, and
entertain it gladly! If we could take it always thus as a message from
heaven, and look upon it and hear it in that notion, I think the fruit
would be incomparably greater, for what is it that makes it dead and
ineffectual in men's hearts, but that the apprehension of it degenerates
and falls down from God to creatures, because it is not taken so as his
word, carrying the stamp of his divine authority? We bring it forth, not
as a message from him, but as from ourselves, and you receive it, not as
from him, but from us, and thus it is adulterated and corrupted on both
hands. My beloved, let us jointly mind this, that whatsoever we have to
declare is a message from God to mortal men; and, therefore, let us so
compose ourselves in his sight as if he were speaking to us. The
conscience of a very heathen was awaked when Ehud told him he had a
message from God to him. Eglon arose out of his seat, that he might hear
it reverently, (Judg. iii. 20.) though it was a bloody message, as it
proved in the event. Yet so much the common dictates of reason might teach
you, that ye should arise and compose yourselves to reverend and awful
attention to what the Lord God will speak. But when, moreover, we know
that the sum of the message is to make us blessed, and raise us up to
communion with him in his joy and happiness we are not only called to
reverence, as to God, but to ardent affection and desire, as to him who by
all means seeks our happiness. O how happy were he that could first hear
and receive this message from him, and then declare it to others! But,
however, though we should fail in that, this doth not change either the
authority or nature of the message itself; and therefore, if men should be
so far destitute of God as not to bring it from him immediately, yet do
not you forsake your own mercy too, but receive it as that which is come
forth from God, receive it for itself, as carrying in its bosom a fulness
of joy to you, and receive it for his sake who moved this embassage first
after sinners, and his sake who carried it to sinners, that is, for the
Father and the Son, to whose fellowship you are here invited. Let us then
hear the message.

"This then is the message, that God is light," &c. The ground of communion
of persons is their union in nature, or likeness one to another. There is
some general society between all man