'3. All that have their fruit to holiness are capacitated for this blessed estate.
1st. They earnestly desire this blessed estate, 'they hunger and thirst after righteousness,' after a larger measure of Grod's sanctifying grace, or likeness to God, Mat. v. 6. The thirst after honour, great- ness, and preferment in the world are tortures to the soul wherein they are harboured ; but they that thirst after more holiness shall be satisfied.
2dly. They are prepared for it. For purity of heart is the root wrhereof happiness is the fruit : Mat. v. 8, ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'
3dly. They have the pledge and earnest of it : 2 Cor. i. 22, ' Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of his Spirit in our hearts ;' and 2 Cor. v. 5, ' Now he which hath wroug htus for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.' The sanctifying Spirit is given us by God as the earnest of the glory which he will give us, for it is the seed of it, and breedeth an inclination thereunto.
Use 1. If this be the reward of the holy, then it informeth us that certainly there is such a thing as everlasting life and happiness ; for God would not feed us with fancies, or flatter us into a fool's paradise.
[1.] The nature of man showeth it ; why else did he make a reason- able creature ? Man of all creatures would be most miserable, if obnoxious to so many infelicities, and were not capable of true happiness some way or other. Certainly he made him to be happy. Is it to be happy here ? In what ? Here is no happiness. Is it in eating, drinking, and sleeping ? These are to strengthen us for our service, which tendeth to our end. Better be without meat, if we could be with- out the need of it, as it will be hereafter : 1 Cor. vi. 13, ' Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats ; but God shall destroy both it and them.' Beasts have not the cares and sorrows of mind that man hath to get and keep what they need. Wherein, then, lieth the dignity of men above the beasts ? Surely there is a life to come.
[2.] The government of God showeth it. Why doth he use such methods, by his precepts and promises, but to bring us to our eternal end ? Why hath he required moral duties of temperance, sobriety, contentation with a little ; such evangelical duties of self-denial, obedi- ence to Christ ; such instituted duties as praying, hearing, sacraments, and seriousness in all, such constant diligence in his service, but that by all these we might come to the blessed hope ? Believers use them to these ends : Acts xxvi. 7, ' Unto which promise the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come;' and Phil. iii. 14, ' I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.'
[3.] The graces planted in us by his Spirit show it. What use is there for faith and hope, if there be no object to be believed and hoped for ? Heb. xi. 1, ' Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.' As the apostle saith, ' Our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also vain,' 1 Cor. xv. 14. Now, is faith
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and hope a dotage ? and the whole doctrine of the gospel a forgery ? and all the sufferings which God's servants have endured for him a mere frenzy and madness ? Surely then there is a reward, and an ever- lasting reward, for the righteous.
Use 2. To persuade us :
[1.] To have our fruit to holiness. Heaven is the perfection of what is begun by sanctification, and the more we increase in it, the more our right is clear. Let us labour, therefore, to be throughly sanctified, and to fill our lives with the fruits of holiness. Heaven is described to be ' the inheritance of the sanctified by the faith which is in Christ •Jesus our Lord,' Acts xxvi, 18 ; the sanctified is there put for the perfected. Our blessedness is in a fair progress when we are drawn from caring for the body to the saving of the soul, from things earthly to heavenly, from the life of the world to the life of God ; in a word, from sin to holiness,
[2.] To fix your hearts more in the hope of eternal life. It is the want of this hope that maketh men swerve from holiness ; some want it in habit, some in act.
1st. Some want it in habit, because they want faith ; for no men will look for that which they do not believe. Now these wallow in sin and filthiness : 2 Peter i. 9, ' He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.' He that is blind as to heavenly things which lie at a distance, can never purify his heart, nor walk holily ; for they will not trouble them- .selves with it. On the contrary, 1 John iii. 3, ' He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.'