insufficient, and therefore a proportioned
good for our necessity and desires, and I am sure ye would be constrained
to cry out with David, "Whom have I in heaven but thee, or in the earth
beside thee? It is good for me to draw near to God." Ye would look on
drawing near, and walking with him, and before him, not only as the most
reasonable thing, but the best thing, most beautiful for you, most
profitable for you, and all other ways would be looked on as the ways of
death.

"His work is perfect." The Lord looked, and behold all was good that was
made. So it was at first. The fabric of this world was an exquisite and
perfect work, a suitable demonstration of his infinite wisdom, wonderful
in all the parts of it, and in the unity and harmony of the whole. But so
also his work of providence is perfect. Divine wisdom hath framed and
contrived all, and it cannot be better. If anything seem imperfect in
itself, yet it is perfect in relation to his glorious ends he directs it
unto. And so would we look on all the works among us. If anything seemed a
spot and disgrace of the creation, certainly the sin of men and
angels,--nay, but even that is so ordered by his holy sovereignty, that in
relation to his majesty, it may be called a perfect work. If ye do but
consider what a glorious high throne he hath erected to himself for
justice and judgment to be the habitation of it, and mercy and truth to go
before it upon the ruins of defaced man, what a theatre of justice he hath
erected upon the angels fall, ye would call it as perfect a work as is in
the world. His work is one in the world, subordinate to one great design
of manifesting his own glorious justice and mercy, omnipotency and wisdom.
Now what do ye see of it but parcels? Though ye comprehend all your time
in one thought, yet certainly ye cannot judge it aright, for it is but one
work that all the several buildings and castings down, all the several
dispensations of his providence, from the beginning to the end, make up,
and when we think upon these disjoined, limit our consideration within the
bounds of our own time, can we rightly apprehend it? Nay, which is worse,
we use to have no more within the compass of our thought, but some present
thing, and how much more do we err then? What beauty, what perfection can
such a small part have? But it is present to him, who beholds with a
glance all these parts. Though succeeding in many generations, he sees it
altogether, joins the