approaches to the nature of spirit, polluted by shining upon a dunghill, or a sunbeam tainted by darting upon a quagmire? Does an angel contract any soil, by stepping into a nasty prison to deliver Peter? What can steam from the most noisome body, to pollute the spiritual nature of God? As he is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, Hab. i. 13, so he is of a more spiritual substance, than to contract any physical pollution from the places where he diffuses himself. Did our Saviour, who had a true body, derive any taint from the lepers he touched, the diseases he cured, or the devils he expelled? God is a pure Spirit; plunges himself into no filth; is dashed with no spot by being present with all bodies. Bodies alone receive defilement from bodies.

Use 5. If God be a Spirit, he is active and communicative. He is not clogged with heavy and sluggish matter, which is cause of dulness and inactivity. The more subtile, thin, and approaching nearer the nature of a spirit any thing is, the more Idiffusive it is. Air is a gliding substance; it spreads itself through all regions; pierces into all bodies; it fills the space between heaven and earth; there is nothing but partakes of the virtue of it. Light, which is an emblem of spirit, insinuates itself into all places, refreshes all things. As spirits are fuller, so they are more overflowing, more piercing, more operative than bodies. The Egyptians' horses were weak things, because they were flesh and not spirit, Isa. xxxi. 3. The soul being a spirit, conveys more to the body than the body can to it. What cannot so great a Spirit do for us? What cannot so great a Spirit work in us? God being a Spirit above all spirits, can pierce into the centre of all spirits; make his way into the most secret recesses; stamp what he pleases. It is no more to him to turn our spirits, than to make a wilderness become waters, and speak a chaos into a beautiful frame of heaven and earth: he can influence our souls with infinitely more ease than our souls can influence our bodies; he can fix in us what motions, frames, inclinations he pleases; he can come and settle in our hearts with all his treasures. It is an encouragement to confide in him, when we petition him for spiritual blessings: as he is a Spirit, he is possessed with spiritual blessings, Eph. i. 3. A spirit delights to bestow things suitable to its nature, as bodies do to communicate what is agreeable to theirs. As he is a Father of spirits, we may go to him for the welfare of our spirits: he being a Spirit, is as able to repair our spirits, as he was to create them.

As he is a Spirit, he is indefatigable in acting. The members of the body tire and flag; but who ever heard of a soul wearied with being active; who ever heard of a weary angel? In the purest simplicity there is the greatest power, the most

efficacious goodness, the most reaching justice to affect the spirit, that can insinuate itself every where to punish wickedness without weariness, as well as to comfort goodness. God is active, because he is a Spirit; and if we be like to God, the more spiritual we are, the more active we shall be.

Use 6. God being a Spirit, is immortal. His being immortal and being invisible are joined together, 1 Tim. i. 17. Spirits are in their nature incorruptible; they can only perish by that hand that framed them. Every compounded thing is subject to mutation; but God being a pure and simple Spirit, is without corruption, without any shadow of change, James i. 17. Where there is composition, there is some kind of repugnancy of one part against the other; and where there is repugnancy, there is a capability of dissolution. God, in regard of his infinite spirituality, has nothing in his own nature contrary to it; can have nothing in himself which is not himself. The world perishes; friends change and are dissolved; bodies moulder, because they are mutable. God is a Spirit in the highest excellency and glory of spirits; nothing is beyond him; nothing above him; no contrariety within him. This is our comfort, if we devote ourselves to him; this God is our God; this Spirit is our Spirit; this is our all, our immutable, our incorruptible support; a Spirit that cannot die and leave us.

Use 7. If God be a Spirit, we see how alone we can converse with him by our spirits. Bodies and spirits are not suitable to one another; we can only see, know, embrace a spirit with our spirits. He judges not of us by our corporeal actions, nor our external devotions by our masks and disguises: he fixes his eye upon the frame of the heart, bends his ear to the groans of our spirits. He is not pleased with outward pomp: he is not a body; therefore the beauty of temples, delicacy of sacrifices, fumes of incense, are not grateful to him; by those, or any external action, we have no communion with him. A spirit when broken is his delightful sacrifice, Psal. li. 17. We must therefore have our spirits fitted for him, be renewed in the spirit of our minds, Eph. iv. 23, that we may be in a posture to live with him, and have an intercourse with him. We can never be united to God, but in our spirits. Bodies unite with bodies, spirits with spirits. The more spiritual any thing is, the more closely does it unite. Air has the closest union; nothing meets together sooner than that, when the parts are divided by the interposition of a body.

Use 8. If God be a Spirit, he only can be the true satisfaction of our spirits. Spirit can alone be filled with a spirit. Content flows from likeness and suitableness: as we have a resemblance to God in regard of the spiritual nature of our soul, so we can have no satisfaction but in him. Spirit can no

more be really satisfied with that which is corporeal, than a beast can delight in the company of an angel. Corporeal things can no more fill a hungry spirit than pure spirit can feed a hungry body. God, the highest Spirit, can alone reach out a full content to our spirits. Man is lord of the creation; nothing below him can be fit for his converse; nothing above him offers itself to his converse but God. We have no correspondence with angels; the influence they have upon us, the protection they afford us, is secret and undiscerned; but God, the highest Spirit, offers himself to us in his Son, in his ordinances, is visible in every creature, presents himself to us in every providence; to him we must seek; in him we must rest. God had no rest from the creation till he had made man; and man can have no rest in the creation, till he rests in God. God only is our dwelling-place, Psal. xc. 1; our souls should long only for him, Psal. lxiii. 1; our souls should wait only upon him. The spirit of man never rises to its original glory, till it be carried up on the wings of faith and love to its original copy. The face of the soul looks most beautiful when it is turned to the face of God the Father of spirits; when the derived spirit is fixed upon the original Spirit, drawing from it life and glory. Spirit alone is the receptacle of spirit. God as Spirit is our principle; we must therefore live upon him. God as Spirit has some resemblance to us his image; we must therefore satisfy ourselves only in him.

Use 9. If God be a Spirit, we should take most care of that wherein we are like to God. Spirit is nobler than body; we must therefore value our spirits above our bodies. The soul, as spirit, partakes more of the Divine nature, and deserves more of our choicest cares. If we have any love to this Spirit, we should have a real affection to our own spirits, as bearing a stamp of the spiritual Divinity, the chiefest of all the works of God, as it is said of Behemoth, Job xl. 19. That which is most the image of this immense Spirit, should be our darling; so David calls his soul, Psal. xxxv. 17. Shall we take care of that wherein we partake not of God, and not delight in the jewel which has his own signature upon it? God was not only the framer of spirits and the end of spirits, but the copy and exemplar of spirits. God partakes of no corporeity, he is pure spirit; but how do we act as if we were only matter and body! We have but little kindness for this great Spirit as well as our own, if we take no care of his immediate offspring, since he is not only Spirit, but the Father of spirits, Heb. xii. 9.

Use 10. If God be a Spirit, let us take heed of those sins which are spiritual. Paul distinguished between the filth of the flesh and that of the spirit, 2 Cor. vii. 1. By the one we defile the body, by the other we defile the spirit, which in re

gard of its nature is of kin to the Creator. To wrong one who is near of kin to a prince, is worse than to injure an inferior subject. When we make our spirits, which are most like to God in their nature, and framed according to his image, a stage to act vain imaginations, wicked desires, and unclean affections, we wrong God in the excellency of his work, and reflect upon the nobleness of the pattern; we wrong him in that part where he has stamped the most signal character of his own spiritual nature; we defile that whereby alone we have converse with him as a Spirit, which he has ordered more immediately to represent him in this nature than all corporeal things in the world can, and make that Spirit with whom we desire to be joined unfit for such a knot. God's spirituality is the root of his other perfections. We have already heard he could not be infinite, omnipresent, immutable without it. Spiritual sins are the greatest root of bitterness within us. As grace in our spirits renders us more like to a spiritual God, so spiritual sins bring us into a conformity to a degraded devil, Eph. ii. 2, 3. Carnal sins change us from men to brutes, and spiritual sins divest us of the image of God for the image of Satan. We should by no means make our spirits a dunghill, which bear upon them the character of the spiritual nature of God, and were made for his residence. Let us therefore behave ourselves towards God in all those ways which the spiritual nature of God requires us.

JOHN iv. 24.-God is a Spirit: and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth.

II. Inference. HAVING thus despatched the first proposition, "God is a Spirit;" it will not be amiss to handle the inference our Saviour makes from that proposition: which is the second observation propounded.

Observation 2. That the worship due from us to God ought to be spiritually performed.

"Spirit and truth" are understood variously. We are to worship God,

Not by legal ceremonies, the evangelical administration being called spirit in opposition to the legal ordinances as carnal, and truth, in opposition to them as typical. As the whole Judaical

service is called flesh; so the whole evangelical service is called spirit. Or spirit may be opposed to the worship at Jerusalem, as it was carnal; truth, to the worship on the mount Gerizim, because it was false. They had not the true object of worship, nor the true medium of worship, as those at Jerusalem had. Their worship should cease, because it was false; and the Jewish worship should cease, because it was carnal.

There is no need of a candle when the sun spreads its beams in the air; no need of those ceremonies, when the Sun of righteousness appeared. They only served for candles to instruct and direct men till the time of his coming. The shadows are chased away by the displaying the substance, so that they can be of no more use in the worship of God, since the end for which they were instituted is expired; and that is discovered to us in the gospel, which the Jews sought for in vain, among the baggage and stuff of their ceremonies.

And with a spiritual and sincere frame. "In spirit," that is, with spirit; with the inward operations of all the faculties of our souls, and the cream and flower of them. And the reason is, because there ought to be a worship suitable to the nature of God. And as the worship was to be spiritual, so the exercise of that worship ought to be in a spiritual manner. It shall be a worship in truth, because the true God shall be adored without those vain imaginations and phantastic resemblances of him, which were common among the blind gentiles, and contrary to the glorious nature of God, and unworthy ingredients in religious services. It shall be a worship in spirit, without those carnal rites the degenerate Jews rested on.2 Such a posture of soul which is the life and ornament of every service God looks for at your hands: there must be some proportion between the object adored, and the manner in which we adore it. It must not be a mere corporeal worship, because God is not a body; but it must rise from the centre of our soul, because God is a Spirit. If he were a body, a bodily worship might suit him, images might be fit to represent him; but being a Spirit, our bodily services bring us not into communion with him. God being a Spirit, we must banish from our minds all carnal imaginations of him, and separate from our wills all cold and dissembled affections to him. We must not only have a loud voice, but an elevated soul; not only a bended knee, but a broken heart; not only a supplicating tone, but a groaning spirit; not only a ready ear for the word, but a receiving heart: and this shall be of greater value with him than the most costly outward services offered on Gerizim or at Jerusalem.

Our Saviour certainly meant not by worshipping in spirit, only the matter of the evangelical service, as opposed to the 1 1 Lingend. tom. 2. p. 777.

2 Taylor's Exemplar, Preface, § 30.