15.  Even in the hour of death, he considers the pains of his dissolution to be nothing else but the breaking down of that partition, which stands betwixt his soul and the sight of that Being who is always present with him, and is about to manifest itself to him in fulness of Joy.

16.  If we would be thus happy and thus sensible of our Maker’s presence, from the secret effects of his mercy and goodness, we must keep such a watch over all our thoughts, that, in the language of the scripture, His soul may have pleasure in us.  We must take care not to grieve his holy spirit, and endeavour to make the meditations of our hearts always acceptable in his sight, that he may delight thus to reside and dwell in us.

17.  The light of nature could direct Seneca to this doctrine in a very remarkable passage among his epistles; Sacer inest in nobis spiritus, bonorum malorumque custos et observator; et quemadmodum nos illum tractamus, ita et ille nos.  ’There is a holy spirit residing in us, who watches and observes both good and evil men, and will treat us after the same manner that we treat him.’  But I shall conclude this discourse with those more emphatical words in divine revelation:  If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Reflections on the third Heaven.

SPECTATOR, No. 580.

1.  I considered in my two last letters, that awful and tremendous subject, the ubiquity or Omnipresence of the Divine Being.  I have shewn that he is equally present in all places throughout the whole extent of infinite space.  This doctrine is so agreeable to reason, that we meet with it in the writings of the enlightened heathens, as I might shew at large, were it not already done by other hands.  But though the Deity be thus essentially present through all the immensity of space, there is one part of it in which he discovers himself in a most transcendant and visible glory.

2.  This is that place which is marked out in scripture under the different appellations of Paradise, the third Heaven, the throne of God, and the habitation of his glory.  It is here where the glorified body of our Saviour resides, and where all the celestial hierarchies, and innumerable hosts of angels, are represented as perpetually surrounding the seat of God with hallelujahs and hymns of praise.  This is that presence of God which some of the divines call his glorious, and others his majestic presence.

3.  He is indeed as essentially present in all other places as in this; but it is here where he resides in a sensible magnificence, and in the midst of all these splendors which can affect the imagination of created beings.

It is very remarkable that this opinion of God Almighty’s presence in heaven, whether discovered by the light of nature, or by a general tradition from our first parents, prevails among all the nations of the world, whatsoever different notions they entertain of the Godhead.