it can neither desire addition nor alteration; that, I
think, is truly heaven: and this can only be in the
enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is
able to terminate the desires of itself, and the unsatiable
wishes of ours. Wherever God will thus manifest him-
self, there is heaven, though within the circle of this
sensible world. Thus, the soul of man may be in
heaven anywhere, even within the limits of his own
proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in the body it
may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator. And
thus we may say that Saint Paul, whether in the body
or out of the body, was yet in heaven. To place it in
the empyreal, or beyond the tenth sphere, is to forget
the world's destruction; for when this sensible world
shall be destroyed, all shall then be here as it is now
there, an empyreal heaven, a quasi vacuity; when to
ask where heaven is, is to demand where the presence of
God is, or where we have the glory of that happy
vision. Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of
the Egyptians, committed a gross absurdity in philo-
sophy, when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God,
and petitioned his Maker, that is truth itself, to a contra-
diction. Those that imagine heaven and hell neighbours,
and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes,
upon consequence of the parable, where Dives discoursed
with Lazarus, in Abraham's bosom, do too grossly con-
ceive of those glorified creatures, whose eyes shall easily
out-see the sun, and behold without perspective the
extremest distances: for if there shall be, in our glori-
fied eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects,