But you may ask, What is it to glorify God? Doth our goodness extend to him? Or is it an advantage to the Almighty that we are righteous? No indeed! And herein is the vast difference between God’s glorifying of us and sanctifying of us, and our glorifying and sanctifying of him. God “calls things that are not,” and makes them to be: but we can do no more but call things that are, and that far below what they are. God’s glorifying is creative,—ours only declarative. He makes us such,—we do no more but declare him to be such. This then is the proper work that man is created for, to be a witness of God’s glory, and to give testimony to the appearances and out-breakings of it in the ways of power and justice and mercy and truth. Other creatures are called to glorify God, but it is rather a proclamation to dull and senseless men, and a provocation of them to their duty. As Christ said to the Pharisees, “If these children hold their peace, the stones would cry out,” so may the Lord turn himself from stupid and senseless man, to the stones and woods and seas and sun and moon, and exhort them to man’s duty, the more to provoke and stir up our dulness, and to make us consider that it is a greater wonder that man, whom God hath made so glorious, can so little express God’s glory, than if stupid and senseless creatures should break out in singing and praising of his majesty. The creatures are the books wherein the lines of the song of God’s praises are written; and man is made a creature capable to read them, and to tune that song. They are appointed to bring in brick to our hand; and God has fashioned us for this employment, to make such a building of it. We are the mouth of the creation; but ere God want praises when our mouth is dumb, and our ears deaf, God will open the mouths of asses, “of babes and sucklings,” and in them perfect praises, Psal. viii. 1, 2. Epictetus said well, _Si Luscinia essem, canerem ut Luscinia: cum autem homo sim, __ quid agam? Laudabo Deum, nec unquam cessabo_—If I were a lark, I would sing as a lark, but seeing I am a man, what should I do, but praise God without ceasing? It is as proper to us to praise God, as for a bird to chaunt. All beasts have their own sounds and voices peculiar to their own nature, this is the natural sound of a man. Now as you would think it monstrous to hear a melodious bird croaking as a raven, so it is no less monstrous and degenerate to hear the most part of the discourses of men savoring nothing of God. If we had known that innocent estate of man, O how would we think he had fallen from heaven! We would imagine that we were thrust down from heaven, where we heard the melodious songs of angels, into hell, to hear the howlings of damned spirits. This then is that we are bound unto, by the bond of our creation, this is our proper office and station God once set us into, when he assigned every creature its own use and exercise. This was our portion, (and O the noblest of all,