Select thoughts, or, Choice helps for a pious spirit a century of divine breathings for a ravished soule, beholding the excellencies of her Lord Jesus / by J. Hall ...

XXIX.

How comfortable a style is that, O God, which thine Apostle gives to thine Heaven, whiles he cals it the inheritance

of the Saints in light? None can come there but Saints; the roomes of this lower world are taken up, common∣ly, with wicked men, with beasts, with Devils; but into that heavenly Jerusalem no unholy thing can enter; Nei∣ther can any Saint be exclu∣ded thence; each of them have not only a share, but an entire right to thy glory: And how many just titles are there, O Saviour, to that re∣gion of blessedness; It is thy Fathers gift, it is thy pur∣chase, it is thy Saints inheri∣tance; theirs only in thy right; by thy gracious adoption they are sons,* 1.1 and as sons, heires: co-heirs with thee of that blessed Patrimony; so feoffed upon them, so posses∣sed

of them, that they can never be disseized: And, Lord, how glorious an inhe∣ritance it is! An inheritance in light: In light incompre∣hensible, in light inaccessible: Lo, the most spirituall of all thy visible creatures is light; and yet this light is but the effect, and emanation of one of thy creatures, the Sun; and serves only for the illumi∣nation of this visible world; but that supernal light is from the Al-glorious beams of thy Divine Majesty, diffusing themselves to those blessed spirits, both Angels, and Souls of thy Saints, who live in the joyful fruition of thee, to all eternity: Alas, Lord, we do here dwell in darkness, and under an uncomfortable

opacity, whiles thy face is clouded from us with mani∣fold temptations there above, with thee, is pure light, a con∣stant noon-tide of glory; I am here under a miserable and obscure wardship; Oh teach me to despise the best of earth; and ravish my soul with a longing desire of being possessed of that blessed inhe∣ritance of the Saints in light.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Rom. 8. 17.