ellowship with him. No, there needs no extraordinary parts for this,
nothing but that the heart be purified from corruptions, those inward
earthly qualities, that are like so many vicious and gross humours,
filling the organ of the sight, these, pride, conceit, self love, passion,
anger, malice, envy, strife, covetousness, love of pleasures, ambition,
these, I say, that possess the hearts of the most excellent natural
spirits, cast a mist upon their eyes, and hinder them to see God, or enjoy
that delight in him, that some poor, weak, and ignorant creatures, whose
hearts the Lord had purged from sin, do find in God. Therefore if any of
you have an aim at this, to have fellowship with God, know both for your
direction and your encouragement, that "God is light." For your direction,
because that must be your pattern, and if you have no study that way to be
like him in holiness, you shall not see him. But take it likewise for an
encouragement, for that style carries not only the necessity of what he
must be, but it holds out likewise the fountain and storehouse of all our
qualifications, for "God is light." The original, primitive light,--all
must borrow of him, and that light is freely and impartially communicable
to poor sinners "with thee is the fountain of light, and in thy light
shall we see light." Let a soul that apprehends its own darkness and
distance from him thus encourage itself. My light is but a beam derived
from his light, and there is no want in him. He is a sun of righteousness.
If I shut not up my heart through unwillingness and unbelief, if I desire
not to keep my sins, but would be purged from them, then that glorious
light may shine without stop and impediment into my heart. He is not only
light in his own nature, but he is a light to us, and if he please to
remove that which is interposed between him and us, it shall be day light
in our hearts again. Thus a soul may strengthen itself to wait on him, and
by looking thus up to him, and fixing on him, we shall be enlightened, and
our faces not be ashamed.

Sermon XII.

1 John i. 6.--"If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk
in darkness, we lie," &c.

There is nothing in which men suffer themselves to be so easily deceived
as in this highest concernment of religion, in which the eternal interest
of their souls lies. There is no delusion either so gross or so universal
in any other thing, as in this thing, in regard of which a