If we look upwards to heaven, we shall behold there all the inhabitants looking down with a sacred contempt upon the trifles, amusements, businesses, and cares of this present life, that engross our affections, awaken our desires, fill our hearts with pleasure or pain, and our flesh with constant labour. With what holy scorn do you think those souls, who are dismissed from flesh, look down upon the hurries and bustles of this present state, in which we are engaged? They dwell in the full sight of those glories which they hoped for here on earth, and their intimate acquaintance with the pleasures of that upper world, and the divine sensations that are raised in them there, make them condemn all the pleasures of this state, and every thing below heaven. This is a part of eternal life, this belongs in some degree to every believer; for he is not a believer that is not got above this world in a good measure; he is not a christian, who is not weaned, in some degree, from this world: For this is our victory, whereby we overcome the world, even our faith. He that is born of God overcomes the world; he that believes in Jesus, is born of God; 1 John v. 1, 4. Whence the argument is plain, he that believes in Jesus the Son of God, overcomes this present world. And where christianity is raised to a good degree of life and power in the soul, there we see the christian got near to heaven: he is, as it were, a fellow for angels, a fit companion for the spirits of the just made perfect. The affairs of this life are beneath his best desires and his hopes; he engages his hand in them so far, as God his Father appoints his duty; but he longs for the upper world, where his hopes are gone before: “When shall I be entirely dismissed from this labour and toil? The gaudy pleasures this world entertains me with, are no entertainments to me; I am weaned from them, I am born from above.” This is the language of that faith that overcomes the world: And faith, where it is wrought in truth in the soul, hath, in some measure, this effect; and where it shines in its brightness, it hath, in a great degree, this sublime grace accompanying it; or rather, (shall I say?) this piece of heavenly glory. Pain and sickness, poverty and reproach, sorrow and death itself, have been contemned by those that have believed in Christ Jesus, with much more honour to christianity, than ever was brought to other religions by the same profession, and the same practice.