Select British Divines, Ed by C Bradley

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. Of the Happiness of Man, and that it is really to be found. You will not, I imagine, be offended, nor think I intend to insult you, because I have once and again, with great earnestness and sincerity, wished you and myself a sound and serious temper of mind; for, if we may represent things as they really are, very few men are possessed of so valuable a blessing. The far greater part of them are intoxicated either with the pleasures or the cares of this world; they stagger about with a tottering and unstable pace; and, as Solomon expresses it, The labor of the foolish wearieth every one of them; because he knoweth not how to go to the city; the heavenly city, and the vision of peace, which very few have a just notion of or are at pains to seek after. Nay, they know not what it is they are seeking. They flutter from one object to another, and live at hazard. They have no certain harbour in view, nor direct their course by any fixed star. But to him that knoweth not the port to which he is bound, no wind can be favorable; neither can he who has not yet determined at what mark he is to shoot, direct his arrow aright. That this may not be our case, but that we may have a proper object to aim at, I propose to speak of the chief end of our being. And to begin at the Father of spirits or pure intelligences?God, blessed for ever, completely happy in himself from all eternity is his own happiness. His self- sufficiency, that eternal and infinite satisfaction and com- placency he has in himself, is the peculiar and most com plete felicity of that supreme Being who derives his existence from himself, and has given being to every thing else; which Chrysostom has well expressed by saying, that it is God's peculiar property to stand iu need of nothing. And Claudius V...