I suppose, I may take it for granted, that all of you amongst whom I am now preaching the kingdom of GOD, hope after death to go to a place which we call Heaven. And my heart’s desire and prayer to GOD for you is, that you all may have mansions prepared for you there. But give me leave to tell you, was you now to see these heavens opened, and the angel (to use the words of the seraphic _Hervey_) cloathed with all his heavenly drapery, with one foot upon the earth, and another upon the sea; nay, were you to see and hear the angel of the everlasting covenant, JESUS CHRIST himself, proclaiming “time shall be no more,” and giving you all an invitation immediately to come to heaven; heaven would be no heaven to you, nay it would be a hell to your souls, unless you were first prepared for a proper enjoyment of it here on earth. “For what communion hath light with darkness?” Or what fellowship could unrenewed sons of _Belial_ possibly keep up with the pure and immaculate JESUS?
The generality of people form strange ideas of heaven. And because the scriptures, in condescension to the weakness of our capacities, describe it by images taken from earthly delights and human grandeur, therefore they are apt to carry their thoughts no higher, and at the best only form to themselves a kind of _Mahometan_ paradise. But permit me to tell you, and GOD grant it may sink deep into your hearts! Heaven is rather a state than a place; and consequently, unless you are previously disposed by a suitable state of mind, you could not be happy even in heaven itself. For what is grace but glory militant? What is glory but grace triumphant? This consideration made a pious author say, that “holiness, happiness, and heaven, were only three different words for one and the self-same thing.” And this made the great _Preston_, when he was about to die, turn to his friends, saying, “I am changing my place, but not my company.” He had conversed with GOD and good men on earth; he was going to keep up the same, and infinitely more refined communion with GOD, his holy angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, in heaven.
To make us meet to be blissful partakers of such heavenly company, this “marred clay,” I mean, these depraved natures of ours, must necessarily undergo an universal moral change: our understandings must be enlightened; our wills, reason, and consciences, must be renewed; our affections must be drawn toward, and fixed upon things above; and because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, this corruptible must put on incorruption, this mortal must put on immortality. And thus old things must literally pass away, and behold all things, even the body as well as the faculties of the soul, must become new.
This moral change is what some call, repentance, some, conversion, some, regeneration; choose what name you please, I only pray GOD, that we all may have the thing. The scriptures call it holiness, sanctification, the new creature, and our LORD calls it a “New birth, or being born again, or born from above.” These are not barely figurative expressions, or the flights of eastern language, nor do they barely denote a relative change of state conferred on all those who are admitted into CHRIST’s church by baptism; but they denote a real, moral change of heart and life, a real participation of the divine life in the soul of man. Some indeed content themselves with a figurative interpretation; but unless they are made to experience the power and efficacy thereof, by a solid living experience in their own souls, all their learning, all their laboured criticisms, will not exempt them from a real damnation. CHRIST hath said it, and CHRIST will stand, “Unless a man,” learned or unlearned, high or low, though he be a master of _Israel_ as _Nicodemus_ was, unless he “be born again, he cannot see, he cannot enter into the kingdom of GOD.”