Reason 1. The promises of God are long in performing; for to exercise our faith and our dependence to the full ;
Reason 2. To take us of from the creature ; and
Reason 3. To endear the things promised to us, to set the greater price upon them when we have them. Many other reasons may be given, if I intended to enlarge myself in that point. A Christian hath a title to heaven. As soon as he is a Christian, he is an heir to heaven. Perhaps he may live here twenty or forty years more before God takes him up to gloiy. Why doth he defer it so long ?
Reason 4. The reason is, God will Jit 7isfor heaven by little and little, and will perfume us as Esther was perfumed before she must come to Ahasuerus, Esth. ii. 12. There were many weeks and months of perfuming. So God will sweeten and fit us for heaven and happiness. It is a holy place ; God a holy God. Christ is that holy one ; and for us to have everlasting com- munion with God and Christ in so holy a place, requireth a great prepara- tion. And God, by deferring it so long, will mortify our affections by little and little, and will have us die to all base things here in affection before we die indeed. David had title to the kingdom as soon as ever he was anointed ; but David was fitted to be an excellent king, indeed, by deferring the performance of the promise till afterward. So in our right and title and possession of heaven, there is a long time between.
Our Saviour Christ was thirty-four years before he was taken up to heaven, because he was to work our salvation. And he was billing to sus- pend his glory for such a time, that he might do it ; to suspend his glory due to him from the first moment of his conception. For by virtue of the
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union, glory was due to him at the first ; but because he had taken upon him to be a Mediator, out of love he would suspend his glory due to him, that he might suffer. And so God, by way of conformity, will suspend the gloiy due to us, that we may be conformed to Christ. Though we have right to heaven as soon as we are born,-" yet God will suspend the full per- formance of it ; because he will by correction and by length of time subdue by little and little that which maketh us unconformable to our head.
And can we complain for any deferring of heaven when we are but con- formed to our glorious head, who was content to be without heaven so long ?
But to go on. As there be gracious and rich promises, and they have long time of performance to us, and ' hope deferred makes the soul lan- guish,' Prov. xiii. 12 ; so God vouchsafeth a spirit to fit that expectation of his, a spirit of hope and waiting. And this waiting hath something perfect in it, and something imperfect. It is a mixed condition. There is good, because there is a promise ; for a promise is the declaration of God's will concerning good. But because it is a promise of a thing not performed, there is an imperfection. So there is a mixture in the promise, and a mix- ture in the grace. Hope and expectation and waiting is an imperfect grace. That there be glorious things, it is perfection of good ; that we have them not in possession, that is the imperfection. So that hope is something, but it is not possessed ; a promise is something, but it is not the performance ; a seed is something, but it is not the plant.
Thus God mixeth our condition here of perfection and imperfection. He will have us in state of imperfection, that we may not think ourselves at home in our country, when we are but in our way. Therefore he will have us in a state of imperfection, that we may long homeward ; yet he will have it a state of good, that we may not sink in the way.
And not only promises ; for in the way to heaven God keeps not all for heaven. He lets in drops of comfort oftentimes in the midst of misery. He doth reveal himself more glorious and sweet than at other times. There is nothing reserved for us in another world, but we have a beginning, a taste, an earnest of it here, to support us till we come to the full possession of what remaineth. We shall have full commimion of saints there ; we have it here, in the taste of it. We Itnow what it is to be acquainted with them that be gracious spirits. We have praising of God for ever there. We know the sweetness of it here in the house of God, which made David desire this one thing, ' that he might dwell in the house of God, to visit the beauty of God,' &c., Ps. xxvii. 4. There we shall have perfect peace ; here we have inward peace, unspeakable and glorious, ' a peace that passeth understanding,' Philip, iv. 7, in the beginning of it. There we shall have joy without all mixture of contrariety ; here we have joy, ' and joy un- speakable and full of glory,' 1 Peter i. 8. There is nothing in heaven that is perfect, that is sweet, and good, and comfortable, but we have a taste and earnest of it here. The Spirit will be all in aU there ; there is some- thing of it in us now. More light in our understandings, more obedience in our wills, more and more love in om* affections, and it is growing more and more.